THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Blake R- Nevius
 
 THE TWO MAGICS
 
 THE TWO MAGICS 
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 COVERING END 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 AUTHOR OF "DAISY MILLER," "THE EUROPEANS' 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1898 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1898, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 NorfoooB $WM 
 J. S. Cu.Mnf? * Co. - Berwick fc Smith 
 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
 
 PS 
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 THE story had held us, round the fire, suffi- 
 ciently breathless, but except the obvious remark 
 that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas eve in an 
 old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I 
 remember no comment uttered till somebody hap- 
 pened to say that it was the only case he had met 
 in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. 
 The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition 
 in just such an old house as had gathered us for 
 the occasion an appearance, of a dreadful kind, 
 to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother 
 and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her 
 not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep 
 again, but to encounter also, herself, before she 
 had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had 
 shaken him. It was this observation that drew 
 from Douglas not immediately, but later in the 
 evening a reply that had the interesting conse- 
 quence to which I call attention. Someone else 
 told a story not particularly effective, which I saw 
 3
 
 4 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 he was not following. ' This I took for a sign that 
 he had himself something to produce and that we 
 should only have to wait. We waited in fact till 
 two nights later; but that same evening, before 
 we scattered, he brought out what was in his 
 mind. 
 
 " I quite agree in regard to Griffin's ghost, or 
 whatever it was that its appearing first to the 
 little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular 
 touch. But it's not the first occurrence of its 
 charming kind that I know to have involved a 
 child. If the child gives the effect another turn of 
 the screw, what do you say to two children ?" 
 
 " "We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, " that 
 they give two turns! Also that we want to hear 
 about them." 
 
 I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which 
 he had got up to present his back, looking down 
 at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. 
 " Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's 
 quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared 
 by several voices to give the thing the utmost 
 price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his 
 triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us 
 and going on : " It's beyond everything. Nothing 
 at all that I know touches it." 
 
 *' For sheer terror ? " I remember asking.
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 5 
 
 He seemed to say it was not so simple as that ; 
 to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He 
 passed his hand over his eyes, made a little winc- 
 ing grimace. " For dreadful dreadf ulness ! " 
 
 "Oh, how delicious! " cried one of the women. 
 
 He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but 
 as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. 
 "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and 
 pain." 
 
 " Well then," I said, " just sit right down and 
 begin." 
 
 He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a 
 log, watched it an instant. Then as he faced us 
 again : " I can't begin. I shall have to send to 
 town." There was a unanimous groan at this, 
 and much reproach ; after which, in his pre- 
 occupied way, he explained. " The story's 
 written. It's in a locked drawer it has not 
 been out for years. I could write to my man and 
 enclose the key ; he could send down the packet 
 as he finds it." It was to me in particular that 
 he appeared to propound this appeared almost 
 to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken 
 a thickness of ice, the formation of many a 
 winter ; had had his reasons for a long silence. 
 The others resented postponement, but it was 
 just his scruples that charmed me. I adjured
 
 b THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 him to write by the first post and to agree with 
 us for an early hearing ; then I asked him if the 
 experience in question had been his own. To 
 this his answer was prompt. "Oh, thank God, 
 no!" 
 
 "And is the record yours? You took the 
 thing down?" 
 
 "Nothing but the impression. I took that 
 here " he tapped his heart. " I've never lost it." 
 
 " Then your manuscript ? " 
 
 " Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beauti- 
 ful hand." He hung fire again. "A woman's. 
 She has been dead these twenty years. She 
 sent me the pages in question before she died." 
 They were all listening now, and of course there 
 was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw 
 the inference. But if he put the inference by 
 without a smile it was also without irritation. 
 " She was a most charming person, but she was 
 ten years older than I. She was my sister's 
 governess," he quietly said. "She was the most 
 agreeable woman I've ever known in her posi- 
 tion ; she would have been worthy of any what- 
 ever. It was long ago, and this episode was long 
 before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at 
 home on my coming down the second summer. 
 I was much there that year it was a beautiful
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 1 
 
 one; and we had, in her off -hours, some strolls 
 and talks in the garden talks in which she 
 struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes ; 
 don't grin : I liked her extremely and am glad to 
 this day to think she liked me too. If she hadn't 
 she wouldn't have told me. She had never told 
 anyone. It wasn't simply that she said so, but 
 that I knew she hadn't. I was sure ; I could see. 
 You'll easily judge why when you hear." 
 
 " Because the thing had been such a scare ? " 
 
 He continued to fix me. " You'll easily judge," 
 he repeated : " you will." 
 
 I fixed him too. "I see. She was in love." 
 
 He laughed for the first time. "You are acute. 
 Yes, she was in love. That is, she had been. 
 That came out she couldn't tell her story with- 
 out its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw 
 it; but neither of us spoke of it. I remember 
 the time and the place the corner of the lawn, 
 the shade of the great beeches and the long, 
 hot summer afternoon. It wasn't a scene for a 
 
 shudder ; but oh ! " He quitted the fire 
 
 and dropped back into his chair. 
 
 "You'll receive the packet Thursday morn- 
 ing ? " I inquired. 
 
 "Probably not till the second post." 
 
 " Well then ; after dinner "
 
 8 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "You'll all meet me here?" He looked us 
 round again. " Isn't anybody going ? " It was 
 almost the tone of hope. 
 
 " Everybody will stay ! " 
 
 "/will and I will I " cried the ladies whose 
 departure had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, how- 
 ever, expressed the need for a little more light. 
 " Who was it she was in love with ? " 
 
 "The story will tell," I took upon myself to 
 reply. 
 
 " Oh, I can't wait for the story ! " 
 
 "The story won't tell," said Douglas; "not in 
 any literal, vulgar way." 
 
 " More's the pity, then. That's the only way I 
 ever understand." 
 
 " Won't you tell, Douglas ? " somebody else in- 
 quired. 
 
 He sprang to his feet again. " Yes to- 
 morrow. Now I must go to bed. Good-night." 
 And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left 
 us slightly bewildered. From our end of the 
 great brown hall we heard his step on the stair ; 
 whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. " Well, if I don't 
 know who she was in love with, I know who he was." 
 
 " She was ten years older," said her husband. 
 
 " liaison de plus at that age ! But it's rather 
 nice, his long reticence."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 9 
 
 " Forty years ! " Griffin put in. 
 
 "With this outbreak at last." 
 
 "The outbreak," I returned, "will make a 
 tremendous occasion of Thursday night ; " and 
 everyone so agreed with me that, in the light 
 of it, we lost all attention for everything else. 
 The last story, however incomplete and like the 
 mere opening of a serial, had been told ; we 
 handshook and " candlestuck," as somebody said, 
 and went to bed. 
 
 I knew the next day that a letter containing 
 the key had, by the first post, gone off to his 
 London apartments ; but in spite of or perhaps 
 just on account of the eventual diffusion of 
 this knowledge we quite let him alone till after 
 dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, 
 as might best accord with the kind of emotion 
 on which our hopes were fixed. Then he became 
 as communicative as we could desire and indeed 
 gave us his best reason for being so. We had it 
 from him again before the fire in the hall, as we 
 had had our mild wonders of the previous night. 
 It appeared that the narrative he had promised 
 to read us really required for a proper intelli- 
 gence a few words of prologue. Let me say here 
 distinctly, to have done with it, that this narra- 
 tive, from an exact transcript of my own made
 
 10 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor 
 Douglas, before his death when it was in sight 
 committed to me the manuscript that reached 
 him on the third of these days and that, on the 
 same spot, with immense effect, he began to read 
 to our hushed little circle on the night of the 
 fourth. The departing ladies who had said they 
 would stay didn't, of course, thank heaven, stay : 
 they departed, in consequence of arrangements 
 made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, 
 produced by the touches with which he had 
 already worked us up. But that only made his 
 little final auditory more compact and select, kept 
 it, round the hearth, subject to a common thrill. 
 
 The first of these touches conveyed that the 
 written statement took up the tale at a point 
 after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to 
 be in possession of was therefore that his old 
 friend, the youngest of several daughters of a 
 poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, 
 on taking service for the first time in the school- 
 room, come up to London, in trepidation, to an- 
 swer in person an advertisement that had already 
 placed her in brief correspondence with the adver- 
 tiser. This person proved, on her presenting 
 herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley 
 Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 11 
 
 this prospective patron proved a gentleman, a 
 bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as 
 had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, 
 before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hamp- 
 shire vicarage. One could easily fix his type ; it 
 never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and 
 bold and pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. 
 He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, 
 but what took her most of all and gave her the 
 courage she afterwards showed was that he put 
 the whole thing to her as a kind of favour, an 
 obligation he should gratefully incur. She con- 
 ceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant 
 
 saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good 
 looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with 
 women. He had for his own town residence a 
 big house filled with the spoils of travel and the 
 trophies of the chase ; but it was to his country 
 home, an old family place in Essex, that he 
 wished her immediately to proceed. 
 
 He had been left, by the death of their parents 
 in India, guardian to a small nephew and a small 
 niece, children of a younger, a military brother, 
 whom he had lost two years before. These 
 children were, by the strangest of chances for a 
 man in his position, a lone man without the 
 right sort of experience or a grain of patience,
 
 12 THE TUKN OF THE SCEEW 
 
 very heavily on his hands. It had all been a 
 great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a 
 series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the 
 poor chicks and had done all he could; had in 
 particular sent them down to his other house, the 
 proper place for them being of course the country, 
 and kept them there, from the first, with the best 
 people he could find to look after them, parting 
 even with his own servants to wait on them and 
 going down himself, whenever he might, to see 
 how they were doing. The awkward thing was 
 that they had practically no other relations and 
 that his own affairs took up all his time. He had 
 put them in possession of Ely, which was healthy 
 and secure, and had placed at the head of their 
 little establishment but below stairs only an 
 excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure 
 his visitor would like and who had formerly been 
 maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper 
 and was also acting for the time as superintendent 
 to the little girl, of whom, without children of her 
 own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. 
 There were plenty of people to help, but of course 
 the young lady who should go down as governess 
 would be in supreme authority. She would also 
 have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who 
 had been for a term at school young as he was
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 13 
 
 to be sent, but what else could be done? and 
 who, as the holidays were about to begin, would 
 be back from one day to the other. There had 
 been for the two children at first a young lady 
 whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She 
 had done for them quite beautifully she was a 
 most respectable person till her death, the great 
 awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no alter- 
 native but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, 
 since then, in the way of manners and things, had 
 done as she could for Flora ; and there were, 
 further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an 
 old pony, an old groom, and an old gardener, all 
 likewise thoroughly respectable. 
 
 So far had Douglas presented his picture when 
 someone put a question. "And what did the 
 former governess die of? of so much respecta- 
 bility ? " 
 
 Our friend's answer was prompt. " That will 
 come out. I don't anticipate." 
 
 "Excuse me I thought that was just what 
 you are doing." 
 
 "In her successor's place," I suggested, "I 
 should have wished to learn if the office brought 
 with it " 
 
 "Necessary danger to life?" Douglas com- 
 pleted my thought. " She did wish to learn, and
 
 14 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what 
 she learnt. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect 
 struck her as slightly grim. She was young, un- 
 tried, nervous : it was a vision of serious duties 
 and little company, of really great loneliness. 
 She hesitated took a couple of days to con- 
 sult and consider. But the salary offered much 
 exceeded her modest measure, and on a second 
 interview she faced the music, she engaged." And 
 Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the 
 benefit of the company, moved me to throw in 
 
 " The moral of which was of course the seduc- 
 tion exercised by the splendid young man. She 
 succumbed to it." 
 
 He got up and, as he had done the night before, 
 went to the fire, gave a stir to a log with his foot, 
 then stood a moment with his back to us. " She 
 saw him only twice." 
 
 " Yes, but that's just the beauty of her passion." 
 
 A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned 
 round to me. " It was the beauty of it. There 
 were others," he went on, "who hadn't suc- 
 cumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty 
 that for several applicants the conditions had 
 been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply 
 afraid. It sounded dull it sounded strange ; and 
 all the more so because of his main condition."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 15 
 
 "Which was ?" 
 
 "That she should never trouble him but 
 never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor 
 write about anything; only meet all questions 
 herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take 
 the whole thing over and let him alone. She 
 promised to do this, and she mentioned to me 
 that when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, 
 he held her hand, thanking her for the sacrifice, 
 she already felt rewarded." 
 
 " But was that all her reward ? " one of the 
 ladies asked. 
 
 " She never saw him again." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the lady ; which, as our friend 
 immediately left us again, was the only other 
 word of importance contributed to the subject 
 till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, 
 in the best chair, he opened the faded red cover 
 of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The 
 whole thing took indeed more nights than one, 
 but on the first occasion the same lady put an- 
 other question. "What is your title?" 
 
 "I haven't one." 
 
 " Oh, I have ! " I said. But Douglas, without 
 heeding me, had begun to read with a fine clear- 
 ness that was like a rendering to the ear of the 
 beauty of his author's hand.
 
 I KEMEMBER, the whole beginning as a succes- 
 sion of flights and drops, a little see-saw of the 
 right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in 
 town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a 
 couple of very bad days found myself doubtful 
 again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. 
 In this state of mind I spent the long hours of 
 bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the 
 stopping-place at which I was to be met by a 
 vehicle from the house. This convenience, I was 
 told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the 
 close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in 
 waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a 
 lovely day, through a country to which the sum- 
 mer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly wel- 
 come, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we 
 turned into the avenue, encountered a reprieve 
 that was probably but a proof of the point to 
 which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, 
 or had dreaded, something so melancholy that 
 16
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 17 
 
 what greeted me was a good surprise. I remem- 
 ber as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear 
 front, its open windows and fresh curtains and 
 the pair of maids looking out; I remember the 
 lawn and the bright flowers and the crunch of 
 my wheels on the gravel and the clustered tree- 
 tops over which the rooks circled and cawed in 
 the golden sky. The scene had a greatness 
 that made it a different affair from my own 
 scant home, and there immediately appeared at 
 the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil 
 person who dropped me as decent a curtsey as 
 if I had been the mistress or a distinguished 
 visitor. I had received in Harley Street a 
 narrower notion of the place, and that, as I 
 recalled it, made me think the proprietor still 
 more of a gentleman, suggested that what I 
 was to enjoy might be something beyond his 
 promise. 
 
 I had no drop again till the next day, for I 
 was carried triumphantly through the following 
 hours by my introduction to the younger of my 
 pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. 
 Grose appeared to me on the spot a creature so 
 charming as to make it a great fortune to have 
 to do with her. She was the most beautiful 
 child I had ever seen, and I afterwards won- 
 c
 
 18 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 dered that iny employer had not told me more 
 of her. I slept little that night I was too 
 much excited ; and this astonished me too, I 
 recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense 
 of the liberality with which I was treated. The 
 large, impressive room, one of the best in the 
 house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, 
 the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in 
 which, for the first time, I could see myself 
 from head to foot, all struck me like the ex- 
 traordinary charm of my small charge as so 
 many things thrown in. It was thrown in as 
 well, from the first moment, that I should get 
 on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on 
 my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather 
 brooded. The only thing indeed that in this 
 early outlook might have made me shrink again 
 was the clear circumstance of her being so glad 
 to see me. I perceived within half an hour 
 that she was so glad stout, simple, plain, 
 clean, wholesome woman as to be positively 
 on her guard against showing it too much. I 
 wondered even then a little why she should 
 wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, 
 with suspicion, might of course have made me 
 uneasy. 
 
 But it was a comfort that there could be no
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 19 
 
 uneasiness in a connection with anything so 
 beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, 
 the vision of whose angelic beauty had proba- 
 bly more than anything else to do with the 
 restlessness that, before morning, made me sev- 
 eral times rise and wander about my room to 
 take in the whole picture and prospect ; to 
 watch, from my open window, the faint summer 
 dawn, to look at such portions of the rest of 
 the house as I could catch, and to listen, while, 
 in the fading dusk, the first birds began to 
 twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound 
 or two, less natural and not without, but within, 
 that I had fancied I heard. There had been a 
 moment when I believed I recognised, faint and 
 far, the cry of a child ; there had been another 
 when I found myself just consciously starting 
 as at the passage, before my door, of a light 
 footstep. But these fancies were not marked 
 enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in 
 the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of 
 other and subsequent matters that they now 
 come back to me. To watch, teach, " form " 
 little Flora would too evidently be the making 
 of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed 
 between us downstairs that after this first occa- 
 sion I should have her as a matter of course at
 
 20 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 night, her small white bed being already ar- 
 ranged, to that end, in my room. What I had 
 undertaken was the whole care of her, and she 
 had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. 
 Grose only as an effect of our consideration for 
 my inevitable strangeness and her natural timid- 
 ity. In spite of this timidity which the child 
 herself, in the oddest way in the world, had 
 been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing 
 it, without a sign of uncomfortable conscious- 
 ness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of 
 one of Raphael's holy infants, to be discussed, 
 to be imputed to her and to determine us I 
 felt quite sure she would presently like me. 
 It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose 
 herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in 
 my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper 
 with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a 
 high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, be- 
 tween them, over bread and milk. There were 
 naturally things that in Flora's presence could 
 pass between us only as prodigious and grati- 
 fied looks, obscure and roundabout allusions. 
 
 "And the little boy does he look like her? 
 Is he too so very remarkable ? " 
 
 One wouldn't flatter a child. " Oh, Miss, most 
 remarkable. If you think well of this one ! "
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCEEW 21 
 
 and she stood there with a plate in her hand, 
 beaming at our companion, who looked from one 
 of us to the other with placid heavenly eyes that 
 contained nothing to check us. 
 
 "Yes; if I do ?" 
 
 "You will be carried away by the little gen- 
 tleman ! " 
 
 "Well, that, I think, is what I came for to 
 be carried away. I'm afraid, however," I remem- 
 ber feeling the impulse to add, " I'm rather easily 
 carried away. I was carried away in London ! " 
 
 I can still see Mrs. Grose's broad face as she 
 took this in. " In Harley Street ? " 
 
 "In Harley Street." 
 
 "Well, Miss, you're not the first and you 
 won't be the last." 
 
 " Oh, I've no pretension," I could laugh, " to 
 being the only one. My other pupil, at any rate, 
 as I understand, comes back tomorrow ? " 
 
 "Not tomorrow Friday, Miss. He arrives, 
 as you did, by the coach, under care of the guard, 
 and is to be met by the same carriage." 
 
 I forthwith expressed that the proper as well 
 as the pleasant and friendly thing would be there- 
 fore that on the arrival of the public conveyance 
 I should be in waiting for him with his little 
 sister ; an idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred
 
 22 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 so heartily that I somehow took her manner as 
 a kind of comforting pledge never falsified, 
 thank heaven ! that we should on every ques- 
 tion be quite at one. Oh, she was glad I was 
 there ! 
 
 What I felt the next day was, I suppose, 
 nothing that could be fairly called a reaction 
 from the cheer of my arrival ; it was probably 
 at the most only a slight oppression produced 
 by a fuller measure of the scale, as I walked 
 round them, gazed up at them, took them in, 
 of my new circumstances. They had, as it were, 
 an extent and mass for which I had not been 
 prepared and in the presence of which I found 
 myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little 
 proud. Lessons, in this agitation, certainly suf- 
 fered some delay ; I reflected that my first duty 
 was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win 
 the child into the sense of knowing me. I spent 
 the day with her out of doors ; I arranged with 
 her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be 
 she, she only, who might show me the place. 
 She showed it step by step and room by room 
 and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, child- 
 ish talk about it and with the result, in half an 
 hour, of our becoming immense friends. Young 
 as she was, I was struck, throughout our little
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 23 
 
 tour, with her confidence and courage with the 
 way, in empty chambers and dull corridors, on 
 crooked staircases that made me pause and even 
 on the summit of an old machicolated square 
 tower that made me dizzy, her morning music, 
 her disposition to tell me so many more things 
 than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have 
 not seen Ely since the day I left it, and I dare 
 say that to my older and more informed eyes it 
 would now appear sufficiently contracted. But 
 as my little conductress, with her hair of gold 
 and her frock of blue, danced before me round 
 corners and pattered down passages, I had the 
 view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy 
 sprite, such a place as would somehow, for di- 
 version of the young idea, take all colour out 
 of storybooks and fairy-tales. Wasn't it just 
 a storybook over which I had fallen a-doze and 
 a-dream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but 
 convenient house, embodying a few features of 
 a building still older, half replaced and half uti- 
 lised, in which I had the fancy of our being 
 almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a 
 great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at 
 the helm !
 
 II 
 
 THIS came home to me when, two days later, 
 I drove over with Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose 
 said, the little gentleman ; and all the more for 
 an incident that, presenting itself the second 
 evening, had deeply disconcerted me. The first 
 day had been, on the whole, as I have expressed, 
 reassuring ; but I was to see it wind up in keen 
 apprehension. The postbag, that evening, it 
 came late, contained a letter for me, which, 
 however, in the hand of my employer, I found 
 to be composed but of a few words enclosing 
 another, addressed to himself, with a seal still 
 unbroken. " This, I recognise, is from the head- 
 master, and the head-master's an awful bore. 
 Read him, please ; deal with him ; but mind 
 you don't report. Not a word. I'm off ! " I 
 broke the seal with a great effort so great 
 a one that I was a long time coming to it ; took 
 the unopened missive at last up to my room and 
 only attacked it just before going to bed. I 
 24
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 25 
 
 had better have let it wait till morning, for it 
 gave me a second sleepless night. With no 
 counsel to take, the next day, I was full of dis- 
 tress; and it finally got so the better of me that 
 I determined to open myself at least to Mrs. 
 Grose. 
 
 "What does it mean? The child's dismissed 
 his school." 
 
 She gave me a look that I remarked at the 
 moment ; then, visibly, with a quick blankness, 
 seemed to try to take it back. " But aren't they 
 all ?" 
 
 " Sent home yes. But only for the holidays. 
 Miles may never go back at all." 
 
 Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. 
 " They won't take him ? " 
 
 "They absolutely decline." 
 
 At this she raised her eyes, which she had 
 turned from me ; I saw them fill with good tears. 
 "What has he done?" 
 
 I hesitated ; then I judged best simply to hand 
 her my letter which, however, had the effect 
 of making her, without taking it, simpty put her 
 hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. 
 " Such things are not for me, Miss." 
 
 My counsellor couldn't read ! I winced at my 
 mistake, which I attenuated as I could, and
 
 26 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 opened my letter again to repeat it to her ; then, 
 faltering in the act and folding it up once more, 
 I put it back in my pocket. " Is he really bad ? " 
 
 The tears were still in her eyes. " Do the gen- 
 tlemen say so ? " 
 
 "They go into no particulars. They simply 
 express their regret that it should be impossible 
 to keep him. That can have only one meaning." 
 Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion ; she 
 forbore to ask me what this meaning might be ; 
 so that, presently, to put the thing with some 
 coherence and with the mere aid of her presence 
 to my own mind, I went on : " That he's an 
 injury to the others." 
 
 At this, with one of the quick turns of simple 
 folk, she suddenly flamed up. " Master Miles ! 
 him an injury ? " 
 
 There was such a flood of good faith in it that, 
 though I had not yet seen the child, my very 
 fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. 
 I found myself, to meet my friend the better, 
 offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. "To his 
 poor little innocent mates ! " 
 
 " It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, " to say 
 such cruel things ! Why, he's scarce ten years 
 old." 
 
 "Yes, yes ; it would be incredible."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 27 
 
 She was evidently grateful for such a profes- 
 sion. " See him, Miss, first. Then believe it ! " 
 I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him ; 
 it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all 
 the next hours, was to deepen almost to pain. 
 Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what 
 she had produced in me, and she followed it up 
 with assurance. "You might as well believe it 
 of the little lady. Bless her," she added the 
 next moment " look at her ! " 
 
 I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten min- 
 utes before, I had established in the schoolroom 
 with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy 
 of nice "round O's," now presented herself to 
 view at the open door. She expressed in her 
 little way an extraordinary detachment from dis- 
 agreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a 
 great childish light that seemed to offer it as a 
 mere result of the affection she had conceived 
 for my person, which had rendered necessary 
 that she should follow me. I needed nothing 
 more than this to feel the full force of Mrs. 
 Grose's comparison, and, catching my pupil in 
 my arms, covered her with kisses in which there 
 was a sob of atonement. 
 
 None the less, the rest of the day, I watched 
 for further occasion to approach my colleague,
 
 28 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy 
 she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, 
 I remember, on the staircase ; we went down 
 together, and at the bottom I detained her, hold- 
 ing her there with a hand on her arm. " I take 
 what you said to me at noon as a declaration 
 that you've never known him to be bad." 
 
 She threw back her head ; she had clearly, by 
 this time, and very honestly, adopted an attitude. 
 " Oh, never known him I don't pretend that ! " 
 
 I was upset again. "Then you have known 
 him ?" 
 
 "Yes indeed, Miss, thank God ! " 
 
 On reflection I accepted this. " You mean that 
 a boy who never is ? " 
 
 " Is no boy for me ! " 
 
 I held her tighter. " You like them with the 
 spirit to be naughty ? " Then, keeping pace with 
 her answer, "So do I ! " I eagerly brought out. 
 " But not to the degree to contaminate " 
 
 "To contaminate?" my big word left her at 
 a loss. I explained it. " To corrupt." 
 
 She stared, taking my meaning in ; but it pro- 
 duced in her an odd laugh. " Are you afraid 
 he'll corrupt you?" She put the question with 
 such a fine bold humour that, with a laugh, a 
 little silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 29 
 
 way for the time to the apprehension of ridi- 
 cule. 
 
 But the next day, as the hour for my drive 
 approached, I cropped up in another place. 
 " What was the lady who was here before ? " 
 
 "The last governess? She was also young 
 and pretty almost as young and almost as 
 pretty, Miss, even as you." 
 
 "Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty 
 helped her ! " I recollect throwing off. " He 
 seems to like us young and pretty ! " 
 
 " Oh, he did" Mrs. Grose assented : " it was 
 the way he liked everyone ! " She had no sooner 
 spoken indeed than she caught herself up. " I 
 mean that's his way the master's." 
 
 I was struck. " But of whom did you speak 
 first?" 
 
 She looked blank, but she coloured. "Why, 
 of Am." 
 
 "Of the master?" 
 
 "Of who else?" 
 
 There was so obviously no one else that the 
 next moment I had lost my impression of her 
 having accidentally said more than she meant ; 
 and I merely asked what I wanted to know. 
 "Did she see anything in the boy ?" 
 
 "That wasn't right? She never told me."
 
 30 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 I had a scruple, but I overcame it. " Was 
 she careful particular ? " 
 
 Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscien- 
 tious. "About some things yes." 
 
 "But not about all?" 
 
 Again she considered. "Well, Miss she's 
 gone. I won't tell tales." 
 
 " I quite understand your feeling," I hastened 
 to reply ; but I thought it, after an instant, not 
 opposed to this concession to pursue : " Did she 
 die here?" 
 
 "No she went off." 
 
 I don't know what there was in this brevity 
 of Mrs. Grose's that struck me as ambiguous. 
 "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked straight 
 out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, 
 I had a right to know what young persons engaged 
 for Bly were expected to do. "She was taken ill, 
 you mean, and went home ? " 
 
 "She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in 
 this house. She left it, at the end of the year, to 
 go home, as she said, for a short holiday, to which 
 the time she had put in had certainly given her a 
 right. We had then a young woman a nurse- 
 maid who had stayed on and who was a good girl 
 and clever ; and she took the children altogether 
 for the interval. But our young lady never came
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 31 
 
 back, and at the very moment I was expecting her 
 I heard from the master that she was dead." 
 I turned this over. " But of what ? " 
 " He never told me ! But please, Miss," said 
 Mrs. Grose, "I must get to my work."
 
 Ill 
 
 HER thus turning her back on me was fortu- 
 nately not, for iny just preoccupations, a snub that 
 could check the growth of our mutual esteem. 
 We met, after I had brought home little Miles, 
 more intimately than ever on the ground of my 
 stupefaction, my general emotion : so monstrous 
 was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child 
 as had now been revealed to me should be under 
 an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and 
 I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me 
 before the door of the inn at which the coach had 
 put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, 
 without and within, in the great glow of fresh- 
 ness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in 
 which I had, from the first moment, seen his little 
 sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. 
 Grose had put her finger on it : everything but a 
 sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept 
 away by his presence. What I then and there 
 took him to my heart for was something divine
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCKEW 33 
 
 that I have never found to the same degree in 
 any child his indescribable little air of knowing 
 nothing in the world but love. It would have 
 been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater 
 sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got 
 back to Ely with him I remained merely bewil- 
 dered so far, that is, as I was not outraged by 
 the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my 
 room, in a drawer. As soon as I could compass a 
 private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her 
 that it was grotesque. 
 
 She promptly understood me. " You mean the 
 cruel charge ? " 
 
 " It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, 
 look at him ! " 
 
 She smiled at my pretension to have discovered 
 his charm. " I assure you, Miss, I do nothing 
 else ! What will you say, then ? " she imme- 
 diately added. 
 
 "In answer to the letter?" I had made up 
 my mind. "Nothing." 
 
 " And to his uncle ? " 
 
 I was incisive. "Nothing." 
 
 " And to the boy himself ? " 
 
 I was wonderful. "Nothing." 
 
 She gave with her apron a great wipe to her 
 mouth. " Then I'll stand by you. We'll see it out. "
 
 34 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 " We'll see it out ! " I ardently echoed, giving 
 her my hand to make it a vow. 
 
 She held me there a moment, then whisked up 
 her apron again with her detached hand. " Would 
 you mind, Miss, if I used the freedom " 
 
 " To kiss me ? No ! " I took the good creat- 
 ure in my arms and, after we had embraced like 
 sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. 
 
 This, at all events, was for the time : a time so 
 full that, as I recall the way it went, it reminds 
 me of all the art I now need to make it a little 
 distinct. What I look back at with amazement 
 is the situation I accepted. I had undertaken, 
 with my companion, to see it out, and I was under 
 a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the 
 extent and the far and difficult connections of 
 such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great wave 
 of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my 
 ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, 
 to assume that I could deal with a boy whose edu- 
 cation for the world was all on the point of begin- 
 ning. I am unable even to remember at this day 
 what proposal I framed for the end of his holidays 
 and the resumption of his studies. Lessons with 
 me, indeed, that charming summer, we all had a 
 theory that he was to have ; but I now feel that, for 
 weeks, the lessons must have been rather my own.
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 35 
 
 I learnt something at first certainly that had 
 not been one of the teachings of my small, smoth- 
 ered life ; learnt to be amused, and even amusing, 
 and not to think for the morrow. It was the first 
 time, in a manner, that I had known space and air 
 and freedom, all the music of summer and all the 
 mystery of nature. And then there was consid- 
 eration and consideration was sweet. Oh, it 
 was a trap not designed, but deep to my 
 imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my van- 
 ity ; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The 
 best way to picture it all is to say that I was off 
 my guard. They gave me so little trouble they 
 were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to 
 speculate but even this with a dim disconnect- 
 edness as to how the rough future (for all fut- 
 ures are rough !) would handle them and might 
 bruise them. They had the bloom of health and 
 happiness ; and yet, as if I had been in charge of 
 a pair of little grandees, of princes of the blood, 
 for whom everything, to be right, would have to 
 be enclosed and protected, the only form that, in 
 my fancy, the after-years could take for them was 
 that of a romantic, a really royal extension of 
 the garden and the park. It may be, of course, 
 above all, that what suddenly broke into this 
 gives the previous time a charm of stillness
 
 36 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 that hush in which something gathers or crouches. 
 The change was actually like the spring of a 
 beast. 
 
 In the first weeks the days were long ; they 
 often, at their finest, gave me what I used to call 
 my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, tea- 
 time and bed-time having come and gone, I had, 
 before my final retirement, a small interval alone. 
 Much as I liked my companions, this hour was 
 the thing in the day I liked most ; and I liked 
 it best of all when, as the light faded or 
 rather, I should say, the day lingered and the 
 last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed 
 sky, from the old trees I could take a turn 
 into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense 
 of property that amused and nattered me, the 
 beauty and dignity of the place. It was a 
 pleasure at these moments to feel myself tran- 
 quil and justified ; doubtless, perhaps, also to 
 reflect that by my discretion, my quiet good 
 sense and general high propriety, I was giving 
 pleasure if he ever thought of it ! to the 
 person to whose pressure I had responded. 
 What I was doing was what he had earnestly 
 hoped and directly asked of me, and that I 
 could, after all, do it proved even a greater joy 
 than I had expected. I dare say I fancied
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 37 
 
 myself, in short, a remarkable young woman 
 and took comfort in the faith that this would 
 more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be re- 
 markable to offer a front to the remarkable 
 things that presently gave their first sign. 
 
 It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of 
 my very hour : the children were tucked away 
 and I had come out for my stroll. One of the 
 thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink 
 now from noting, used to be with me in these 
 wanderings was that it would be as charming 
 as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. 
 Someone would appear there at the turn of a 
 path and would stand before me and smile and 
 approve. I didn't ask more than that I only 
 asked that he should know; and the only way 
 to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the 
 kind light of it, in his handsome face. That 
 was exactly present to me by which I mean 
 the face was when, on the first of these occa- 
 sions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped 
 short on emerging from one of the plantations 
 and coming into view of the house. What ar- 
 rested me on the spot and with a shock much 
 greater than any vision had allowed for was 
 the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, 
 turned real. He did stand there ! but high
 
 38 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the 
 tower to which, on that first morning, little 
 Flora had conducted me. This tower was one 
 of a pair square, incongruous, crenelated struct- 
 ures that were distinguished, for some reason, 
 though I could see little difference, as the new 
 and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the 
 house and were probably architectural absurdi- 
 ties, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being 
 wholly disengaged nor of a height too preten- 
 tious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, 
 from a romantic revival that was already a re- 
 spectable past. I admired them, had fancies 
 about them, for we could all profit in a degree, 
 especially when they loomed through the dusk, 
 by the grandeur of their actual battlements ; 
 yet it was not at such an elevation that the 
 figure I had so often invoked seemed most in 
 place. 
 
 It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twi- 
 light, I remember, two distinct gasps of emotion, 
 which were, sharply, the shock of my first and 
 that of my second surprise. My second was a 
 violent perception of the mistake of my first : the 
 man who met my eyes was not the person I had 
 precipitately supposed. There came to me thus 
 a bewilderment of vision of which, after these
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 39 
 
 years, there is no living view that I can hope to 
 give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a 
 permitted object of fear to a young woman pri- 
 vately bred ; and the figure that faced me was 
 a few more seconds assured me as little any- 
 one else I knew as it was the image that had been 
 in my mind. I had not seen it in Harley Street 
 I had not seen it anywhere. The place, more- 
 over, in the strangest way in the world, had, on 
 the instant, and by the very fact of its appear- 
 ance, become a solitude. To me at least, making 
 my statement here with a deliberation with which 
 I have never made it, the whole feeling of the 
 moment returns. It was as if, while I took in 
 what I did take in all the rest of the scene had 
 been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I 
 write, the intense hush in which the sounds of 
 evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in 
 the golden sky and the friendly hour lost, for the 
 minute, all its voice. But there was no other 
 change in nature, unless indeed it were a change 
 that I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold 
 was still in the sky, the clearness in the air, and 
 the man who looked at me over the battlements 
 was as definite as a picture in a frame. That's 
 how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, of 
 each person that he might have been and that he
 
 40 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 was not. We were confronted across our distance 
 quite long enough for me to ask myself with in- 
 tensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect 
 of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few 
 instants more became intense. 
 
 The great question, or one of these, is, after- 
 wards, I know, with regard to certain matters, 
 the question of how long they have lasted. Well, 
 this matter of mine, think what you will of it, 
 lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities, none 
 of which made a difference for the better, that I 
 could see, in there having been in the house 
 and for how long, above all ? a person of whom 
 I was in ignorance. It lasted while I just bridled 
 a little with the sense that my office demanded 
 that there should be no such ignorance and no 
 such person. It lasted while this visitant, at all 
 events, and there was a touch of the strange 
 freedom, as I remember, in the sign of famil- 
 iarity of his wearing no hat, seemed to fix me, 
 from his position, with just the question, just the 
 scrutiny through the fading light, that his own 
 presence provoked. We were too far apart to 
 call to each other, but there was a moment at 
 which, at shorter range, some challenge between 
 us, breaking the hush, would have been the right 
 result of our straight mutual stare. He was in
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCKEW 41 
 
 one of the angles, the one away from the house, 
 very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands 
 on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I 
 form on this page ; then, exactly, after a minute, 
 as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly changed 
 his place passed, looking at me hard all the 
 while, to the opposite corner of the platform. 
 Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during this 
 transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can 
 see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, 
 passed from one of the crenelations to the next. 
 He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and 
 even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. 
 He turned away ; that was all I knew.
 
 IV 
 
 IT was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion, 
 for more, for I was rooted as deeply as I was 
 shaken. Was there a " secret " at Ely a mys- 
 tery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable 
 relative kept in unsuspected confinement ? I 
 can't say how long I turned it over, or how 
 long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I 
 remained where I had had my collision ; I only 
 recall that when I re-entered the house darkness 
 had quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, 
 certainly had held me and driven me, for I must, 
 in circling about the place, have walked three 
 miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more 
 overwhelmed that this mere dawn of alarm was 
 a comparatively human chill. The most singu- 
 lar part of it in fact singular as the rest had 
 been was the part I became, in the hall, aware 
 of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes 
 back to me in the general train the impression, 
 as I received it on my return, of the wide white 
 42
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 43 
 
 panelled space, bright in the lamplight and with 
 its portraits and red carpet, and of the good 
 surprised look of my friend, which immediately 
 told me she had missed me. It came to me 
 straightway, under her contact, that, with plain 
 heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at my appear- 
 ance, she knew nothing whatever that could bear 
 upon the incident I had there ready for her. I 
 had not suspected in advance that her comfort- 
 able face would pull me up, and I somehow 
 measured the importance of what I had seen by 
 my thus finding myself hesitate to mention it. 
 Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me 
 so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear 
 was one, as I may say, with the instinct of spar- 
 ing my companion. On the spot, accordingly, in 
 the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, 
 for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased, 
 achieved an inward revolution offered a vague 
 pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the 
 beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and 
 wet feet, went as soon as possible to my room. 
 
 Here it was another affair ; here, for many 
 days after, it was a queer affair enough. There 
 were hours, from day to day, or at least there 
 were moments, snatched even from clear duties, 
 when I had to shut myself up to think. It
 
 44 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 was not so much yet that I was more nervous 
 than I could bear to be as that I was remarkably 
 afraid of becoming so ; for the truth I had now 
 to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth 
 that I could arrive at no account whatever of the 
 visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and 
 yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. 
 It took little time to see that I could sound with- 
 out forms of inquiry and without exciting remark 
 any domestic complication. The shock I had 
 suffered must have sharpened all my senses ; I 
 felt sure, at the end of three days and as the 
 result of mere closer attention, that I had not 
 been practised upon by the servants nor made the 
 object of any "game." Of whatever it was that 
 I knew nothing was known around me. There 
 was but one sane inference : someone had taken 
 a liberty rather gross. That was what, re- 
 peatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the 
 door to say to myself. We had been, collec- 
 tively, subject to an intrusion ; some unscru- 
 pulous traveller, curious in old houses, had made 
 his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from 
 the best point of view, and then stolen out as 
 he came. If he had given me such a bold hard 
 stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. 
 The good thing, after all, was that we should 
 surely see no more of him.
 
 THE TUEN OF THE SCREW 45 
 
 This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not 
 to leave me to judge that what, essentially, made 
 nothing else much signify was simply my charm- 
 ing work. My charming work was just my life 
 with Miles and Flora, and through nothing could 
 I so like it as through feeling that I could throw 
 myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my 
 small charges was a constant joy, leading me to 
 wonder afresh at the vanity of my original fears, 
 the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the 
 probable grey prose of my office. There was to 
 be no grey prose, it appeared, and no long grind; 
 so how could work not be charming that pre- 
 sented itself as daily beauty ? It was all the 
 romance of the nursery and the poetry of the 
 schoolroom. I don't mean by this, of course, 
 that we studied only fiction and verse ; I mean I 
 can express no otherwise the sort of interest my 
 companions inspired. How can I describe that 
 except by saying that instead of growing used to 
 them and it's a marvel for a governess : I 
 call the sisterhood to witness ! I made constant 
 fresh discoveries. There was one direction, as- 
 suredly, in which these discoveries stopped : deep 
 obscurity continued to cover the region of the 
 boy's conduct at school. It had been promptly 
 given me, I have noted, to face that mystery
 
 4b THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 without a pang. Perhaps even it would be 
 nearer the truth to say that without a word 
 he himself had cleared it up. He had made the 
 whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed 
 there with the real rose-flush of his innocence : 
 he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, 
 unclean school-world, and he had paid a price for 
 it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such 
 differences, such superiorities of quality, always, 
 on the part of the majority which could include 
 even stupid, sordid head-masters turns infal- 
 libly to the vindictive. 
 
 Both the children had a gentleness (it was 
 their only fault, and it never made Miles a 
 muff) that kept them how shall I express it? 
 almost impersonal and certainly quite unpun- 
 ishable. They were like the cherubs of the 
 anecdote, who had morally, at any rate 
 nothing to whack ! I remember feeling with 
 Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, 
 no history. We expect of a small child a scant 
 one, but there was in this beautiful little boy 
 something extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraor- 
 dinarily happy, that, more than in any creature 
 of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning 
 anew each day. He had never for a second suf- 
 fered. I took this as a direct disproof of his
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 47 
 
 having really been chastised. If he had been 
 wicked he would have " caught " it, and I should 
 have caught it by the rebound I should have 
 found the trace. I found nothing at all, and he 
 was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his 
 school, never mentioned a comrade or a master ; 
 and I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted 
 to allude to them. Of course I was under the 
 spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the 
 time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself 
 up to it ; it was an antidote to any pain, and I 
 had more pains than one. I was in receipt in 
 these days of disturbing letters from home, where 
 things were not going well. But with my chil- 
 dren, what things in the world mattered? That 
 was the question I used to put to my scrappy 
 retirements. I was dazzled by their loveliness. 
 
 There was a Sunday to get on when it 
 rained with such force and for so many hours 
 that there could be no procession to church ; in 
 consequence of which, as the day declined, I had 
 arranged with Mrs. Grose that, should the even- 
 ing show improvement, we would attend to- 
 gether the late service. The rain happily stopped, 
 and I prepared for our walk, which, through the 
 park and by the good road to the village, would 
 be a matter of twenty minutes. Coming down-
 
 48 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 stairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remem- 
 bered a pair of gloves that had required three 
 stitches and that had received them with a 
 publicity perhaps not edifying while I sat with 
 the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by 
 exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany 
 and brass, the " grown-up " dining-room. The 
 gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in 
 to recover them. The day was grey enough, but 
 the afternoon light still lingered, and it enabled 
 me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recog- 
 nise, on a chair near the wide window, then 
 closed, the articles I wanted, but to become aware 
 of a person on the other side of the window and 
 looking straight in. One step into the room had 
 sufficed ; my vision was instantaneous ; it was all 
 there. The person looking straight in was the 
 person who had already appeared to me. He 
 appeared thus again with I won't say greater dis- 
 tinctness, for that was impossible, but with a 
 nearness that represented a forward stride in our 
 intercourse and made me, as I met him, catch my 
 breath and turn cold. He was the same he 
 was the same, and seen, this time, as he had been 
 seen before, from the waist up, the window, 
 though the dining-room was on the ground-floor, 
 not going down to the terrace on which he stood.
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 49 
 
 His face was close to the glass, yet the effect of 
 this better view was, strangely, only to show me 
 how intense the former had been. He remained 
 but a few seconds long enough to convince me 
 he also saw and recognised ; but it was as if I 
 had been looking at him for years and had known 
 him always. Something, however, happened this 
 time that had not happened before ; his stare 
 into my face, through the glass and across the 
 room, was as deep and hard as then, but it quitted 
 me for a moment during which I could still watch 
 it, see it fix successively several other things. 
 On the spot there came to me the added shock 
 of a certitude that it was not for me he had come 
 there. He had come for someone else. 
 
 The flash of this knowledge for it was 
 knowledge in the midst of dread produced in 
 me the most extraordinary effect, started, as I 
 stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and 
 courage. I say courage because I was beyond 
 all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight 
 out of the door again, reached that of the house, 
 got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing 
 along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned 
 a corner and came full in sight. But it was in 
 sight of nothing now my visitor had vanished. 
 I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief
 
 50 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 of this ; but I took in the whole scene I gave 
 him time to reappear. I call it time, but how 
 long was it ? I can't speak to the purpose today 
 of the duration of these things. That kind of 
 measure must have left me : they couldn't have 
 lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. 
 The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and 
 the garden beyond it, all I could see of the 
 park, were empty with a great emptiness. There 
 were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember 
 the clear assurance I felt that none of them con- 
 cealed him. He was there or was not there : 
 not there if I didn't see him. I got hold of 
 this ; then, instinctively, instead of returning as 
 I had come, went to the window. It was con- 
 fusedly present to me that I ought to place 
 myself where he had stood. I did so ; I applied 
 my face to the pane and looked, as he had 
 looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, 
 to show me exactly what his range had been, 
 Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, 
 came in from the hall. With this I had the 
 full image of a repetition of what had already 
 occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own 
 visitant ; she pulled up short as I had done ; 
 I gave her something of the shock that I had 
 received. She turned white, and this made me
 
 THE TUKX OF THJE SCKEW 51 
 
 ask myself if I had blanched as much. She 
 stared, in short, and retreated on just my lines, 
 and I knew she had then passed out and come 
 round to me and that I should presently meet 
 her. I remained where I was, and while I 
 waited I thought of more things than one. But 
 there's only one I take space to mention. I 
 wondered why she should be scared.
 
 OH, she let me know as soon as, round the 
 corner of the house, she loomed again into view. 
 "What in the name of goodness is the mat- 
 ter ?" She was now flushed and out of 
 
 breath. 
 
 I said nothing till she came quite near. " With 
 me?" I must have made a wonderful face. "Do 
 I show it?" 
 
 " You're as white as a sheet. You look awful." 
 
 I considered; I could meet on this, without 
 scruple, any innocence. My need to respect the 
 bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, without a 
 rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for 
 the instant it was not with what I kept back. 
 I put out my hand to her and she took it ; I 
 held her hard a little, liking to feel her close to 
 me. There was a kind of support in the shy 
 heave of her surprise. " You came for me for 
 church, of course, but I can't go." 
 
 " Has anything happened? " 
 52
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 53 
 
 " Yes. You must know now. Did I look very 
 queer?" 
 
 " Through this window ? Dreadful ! " 
 
 "Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. 
 Grose's eyes expressed plainly that she had no 
 wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her 
 place not to be ready to share with me any 
 marked inconvenience. Oh, it was quite set- 
 tled that she must share ! " Just what you saw 
 from the dining-room a minute ago was the effect 
 of that. What /saw just before was much 
 worse." 
 
 Her hand tightened. "What was it?" 
 
 "An extraordinary man. Looking in." 
 
 "What extraordinary man?" 
 
 "I haven't the least idea." 
 
 Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then 
 where is he gone ? " 
 
 "I know still less." 
 
 " Have you seen him before ? " 
 
 "Yes once. On the old tower." 
 
 She could only look at me harder. " Do you 
 mean he's a stranger ? " 
 
 " Oh, very much ! " 
 
 "Yet you didn't tell me?" 
 
 " No for reasons. But now that you've 
 guessed "
 
 54 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 Mrs. Grbse's round eyes encountered this 
 charge. "Ah, I haven't guessed!" she said very 
 simply. " How can I if you don't imagine ? " 
 
 "I don't in the very least." 
 
 "You've seen him nowhere but on the tower?" 
 
 "And on this spot just now." 
 
 Mrs. Grose looked round again. "What was 
 he doing on the tower?" 
 
 "Only standing there and looking down at me." 
 
 She thought a minute. " Was he a gentleman ? " 
 
 I found I had no need to think. "No." She 
 gazed in deeper wonder. " No." 
 
 " Then nobody about the place ? Nobody from 
 the village ? " 
 
 "Nobody nobody. I didn't tell you, but 
 I made sure." 
 
 She breathed a vague relief : this was, oddly, 
 so much to the good. It only went indeed a 
 little way. "But if he isn't a gentleman ' 
 
 " What i he ? He's a horror." 
 
 " A horror ? " 
 
 " He's God help me if I know what he is ! " 
 
 Mrs. Grose looked round once more ; she fixed 
 her eyes on the duskier distance, then, pulling 
 herself together, turned to me with abrupt in- 
 consequence. "It's time we should be at church." 
 
 " Oh, I'm not fit for church ! "
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 55 
 
 " Won't it do you good ? " 
 
 " It won't do them ! " I nodded at the 
 
 house. 
 
 "The children?" 
 
 "I can't leave them now." 
 
 " You're afraid ? " 
 
 I spoke boldly. " I'm afraid of him." 
 
 Mrs. Grose's large face showed me, at this, for 
 the first time, the far-away faint glimmer of a 
 consciousness more acute : I somehow made out 
 in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had 
 not given her and that was as yet quite obscure 
 to me. It comes back to me that I thought 
 instantly of this as something I could get from 
 her ; and I felt it to be connected with the desire 
 she presently showed to know more. "When 
 was it on the tower ? " 
 
 "About the middle of the month. At this 
 same hour." 
 
 " Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose. 
 
 " Oh no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you." 
 
 " Then how did he get in ? " 
 
 "And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I 
 had no opportunity to ask him ! This evening, 
 you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to 
 get in." 
 
 " He only peeps ? "
 
 56 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 " I hope it will be confined to that ! " She had 
 now let go my hand ; she turned away a little. 
 I waited an instant ; then I brought out : " Go to 
 church. Good-bye. I must watch." 
 
 Slowly she faced me again. " Do you fear for 
 them?" 
 
 We met in another long look. " Don't you ? " 
 Instead of answering she came nearer to the win- 
 dow and, for a minute, applied her face to the 
 glass. " You see how he could see," I meanwhile 
 went on. 
 
 She didn't move. " How long was he here ? " 
 
 " Till I came out. I came to meet him." 
 
 Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was 
 still more in her face. "/ couldn't have come 
 out." 
 
 " Neither could I ! " I laughed again. " But I 
 did come. I have my duty." 
 
 " So have I mine," she replied ; after which she 
 added : " What is he like ? " 
 
 "I've been dying to tell you. But he's like 
 nobody." 
 
 "Nobody?" she echoed. 
 
 " He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that 
 she already, in this, with a deeper dismay, found a 
 touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke. 
 " He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 57 
 
 pale face, long in shape, with straight, good feat- 
 ures and little, rather queer whiskers that are as 
 red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, 
 darker; they look particularly arched and as if 
 they might move a good deal. His eyes are 
 sharp, strange awfully ; but I only know clearly 
 that they're rather small and very fixed. His 
 mouth's wide, and his lips are thin, and except for 
 his little whiskers he's quite clean-shaven. He 
 gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor." 
 
 " An actor ! " It was impossible to resemble 
 one less, at least, than Mrs. Grose at that mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. 
 He's tall, active, erect," I continued, " but never 
 no, never ! a gentleman." 
 
 My companion's face had blanched as I went 
 on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth 
 gaped. " A gentleman ? " she gasped, confounded, 
 stupefied : "a gentleman he?" 
 
 " You know him then ? " 
 
 She visibly tried to hold herself. " But he is 
 handsome ? " 
 
 I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably ! " 
 
 "And dressed ?" 
 
 "In somebody's clothes. They're smart, but 
 they're not his own."
 
 58 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 She broke into a breathless affirmative groan. 
 " They're the master's ! " 
 
 I caught it up. "You do know him?" 
 
 She faltered but a second. " Quint ! " she cried. 
 
 "Quint?" 
 
 " Peter Quint his own man, his valet, when 
 he was here ! " 
 
 " When the master was ? " 
 
 Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it 
 all together. " He never wore his hat, but he 
 did wear well, there were waistcoats missed ! 
 They were both here last year. Then the 
 master went, and Quint was alone." 
 
 I followed, but halting a little. " Alone ? " 
 
 "Alone with us." Then, as from a deeper 
 depth, " In charge," she added. 
 
 " And what became of him ? " 
 
 She hung fire so long that I was still more 
 mystified. "He went too," she brought out at 
 last. 
 
 "Went where?" 
 
 Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. 
 "God knows where! He died." 
 
 "Died?" I almost shrieked. 
 
 She seemed fairly to square herself, plant 
 herself more firmly to utter the wonder of it. 
 "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead."
 
 VI 
 
 IT took of course more than that particular 
 passage to place us together in presence of 
 what we had now to live with as we could 
 my dreadful liability to impressions of the 
 order so vividly exemplified, and my compan- 
 ion's knowledge, henceforth, a knowledge half 
 consternation and half compassion, of that lia- 
 bility. There had been, this evening, after the 
 revelation that left me, for an hour, so pros- 
 trate there had been, for either of us, no 
 attendance on any service but a little service 
 of tears and vows, of prayers and promises, a 
 climax to the series of mutual challenges and 
 pledges that had straightway ensued on our 
 retreating together to the schoolroom and shut- 
 ting ourselves up there to have everything out. 
 The result of our having everything out was 
 simply to reduce our situation to the last 
 rigour of its elements. She herself had seen 
 nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and no- 
 59
 
 60 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 body in the house but the governess was in the 
 governess's plight; yet she accepted without 
 directly impugning my sanity the truth as I 
 gave it to her, and ended by showing me, on 
 this ground, an awe-stricken tenderness, an ex- 
 pression of the sense of my more than question- 
 able privilege, of which the very breath has 
 remained with me as that of the sweetest of 
 human charities. 
 
 What was settled between us, accordingly, that 
 night, was that we thought we might bear things 
 together ; and I was not even sure that, in spite 
 of her exemption, it was she who had the best of 
 the burden. I knew at this hour, I think, as well 
 as I knew later what I was capable of meeting to 
 shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to 
 be wholly sure of what my honest ally was pre- 
 pared for to keep terms with so compromising a 
 contract. I was queer company enough quite 
 as queer as the company I received ; but as I 
 trace over what we went through I see how much 
 common ground we must have found in the one 
 idea that, by good fortune, could steady us. It 
 was the idea, the second movement, that led me 
 straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber 
 of my dread. I could take the air in the court, 
 at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me.
 
 THE TUKN OP THE SCREW 61 
 
 Perfectly can I recall now the particular way 
 strength came to me before we separated for the 
 night. We had gone over and over every feature 
 of what I had seen. 
 
 " He was looking for someone else, you say 
 someone who was not you ? " 
 
 "He was looking for little Miles." A porten- 
 tous clearness now possessed me. " That's whom 
 he was looking for." 
 
 " But how do you know ? " 
 
 " I know, I know, I know ! " My exaltation 
 grew. " And you know, my dear ! " 
 
 She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not 
 even so much telling as that. She resumed in a 
 moment, at any rate : " What if he should see 
 him?" 
 
 " Little Miles ? That's what he wants ! " 
 
 She looked immensely scared again. "The 
 child?" 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! The man. He wants to 
 appear to them" That he might was an awful 
 conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at 
 bay ; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was 
 what I succeeded in practically proving. I had 
 an absolute certainty that I should see again what 
 I had already seen, but something within me said 
 that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject
 
 62 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by 
 surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory 
 victim and guard the tranquillity of my compan- 
 ions. The children, in especial, I should thus 
 fence about and absolutely save. I recall one of 
 the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. 
 
 " It does strike me that my pupils have never 
 mentioned " 
 
 She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. 
 " His having been here and the time they were 
 with him ? " 
 
 " The time they were with him, and his name, 
 his presence, his history, in any way." 
 
 "Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She 
 never heard or knew." 
 
 " The circumstances of his death ? " I thought 
 with some intensity. " Perhaps not. But Miles 
 would remember Miles would know." 
 
 " Ah, don't try him ! " broke from Mrs. Grose. 
 
 I returned her the look she had given me. 
 "Don't be afraid." I continued to think. "It 
 is rather odd." 
 
 "That he has never spoken of him ? " 
 
 " Never by the least allusion. And you tell me 
 they were ' great friends ' ? " 
 
 "Oh, it wasn't him!" Mrs. Grose with empha- 
 sis declared. "It was Quint's own fancy. To
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 63 
 
 play with him, I mean to spoil him." She 
 paused a moment ; then she added : " Quint was 
 much too free." 
 
 This gave me, straight from my vision of his 
 face such a face ! a sudden sickness of dis- 
 gust. " Too free with my boy ? " 
 
 " Too free with everyone ! " 
 
 I forbore, for the moment, to analyse this de- 
 scription further than by the reflection that a part 
 of it applied to several of the members of the 
 household, of the half-dozen maids and men who 
 were still of our small colony. But there was 
 everything, for our apprehension, in the lucky 
 fact that no discomfortable legend, no pertur- 
 bation of scullions, had ever, within anyone's 
 memory, attached to the kind old place. It had 
 neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, 
 most apparently, only desired to cling to me and 
 to quake in silence. I even put her, the very last 
 thing of all, to the test. It was when, at mid- 
 night, she had her hand on the schoolroom door 
 to take leave. " I have it from you then for it's 
 of great importance that he was definitely and 
 admittedly bad ? " 
 
 "Oh, not admittedly. I knew it but the 
 master didn't. " 
 
 " And you never told him ? "
 
 64 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "Well, he didn't like tale-bearing lie hated 
 complaints. He was terribly short with any- 
 thing of that kind, and if people were all right 
 to him " 
 
 " He wouldn't be bothered with more ? " This 
 squared well enough with my impression of him : 
 he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so 
 very particular perhaps about some of the com- 
 pany he kept. All the same, I pressed my in- 
 terlocutress. " I promise you I would have 
 told ! " 
 
 She felt my discrimination. " I dare say I 
 was wrong. But, really, I was afraid." 
 
 " Afraid of what ? " 
 
 " Of things that man could do. Quint was so 
 clever he was so deep." 
 
 I took this in still more than, probably, I 
 showed. " You weren't afraid of anything else ? 
 Not of his effect ?" 
 
 " His effect ? " she repeated with a face of 
 anguish and waiting while I faltered. 
 
 " On innocent little precious lives. They were 
 in your charge." 
 
 " No, they were not in mine ! " she roundly and 
 distressfully returned. " The master believed in 
 him and placed him here because he was supposed 
 not to be well and the country air so good for
 
 THE TUEX OP THE SCREW 65 
 
 him. So he had everything to say. Yes " she 
 let me have it " even about them." 
 
 " Them that creature ? " I had to smother a 
 kind of howl. " And you could bear it ! " 
 
 " No. I couldn't and I can't now ! " And 
 the poor woman burst into tears. 
 
 A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I 
 have said, to follow them ; yet how often and how 
 passionately, for a week, we came back together 
 to the subject ! Much as we had discussed it that 
 Sunday night, I was, in the immediate later hours 
 in especial for it may be imagined whether I 
 slept still haunted with the shadow of some- 
 thing she had not told me. I myself had kept 
 back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose 
 had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morn- 
 ing, that this was not from a failure of frankness, 
 but because on every side there were fears. It 
 seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the 
 time the morrow's sun was high I had restlessly 
 read into the facts before us almost all the mean- 
 ing they were to receive from subsequent and 
 more cruel occurrences. What they gave me 
 above all was just the sinister figure of the living 
 man the dead one would keep awhile ! and 
 of the months he had continuously passed at Ely, 
 which, added up, made a formidable stretch. The
 
 66 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on 
 the dawn of a winter's morning, Peter Quint was 
 found, by a labourer going to early work, stone 
 dead on the road from the village : a catastrophe 
 explained superficially at least by a visible 
 wound to his head ; such a wound as might have 
 been produced and as, on the final evidence, 
 had been by a fatal slip, in the dark and after 
 leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, 
 a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of which 
 he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night 
 and in liquor, accounted for much practically, 
 in the end and after the inquest and boundless 
 chatter, for everything ; but there had been mat- 
 ters in his life strange passages and perils, se- 
 cret disorders, vices more than suspected that 
 would have accounted for a good deal more. 
 
 I scarce know how to put my story into words 
 that shall be a credible picture of my state of 
 mind; but I was in these days literally able to 
 find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism 
 the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that 
 I had been asked for a service admirable and 
 difficult ; and there would be a greatness in let- 
 ting it be seen oh, in the right quarter ! 
 that I could succeed where many another girl 
 might have failed. It was an immense help to
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 67 
 
 me I confess I rather applaud myself as I look 
 back ! that I saw my service so strongly and 
 so simply. I was there to protect and defend 
 the little creatures in the world the most be- 
 reaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose 
 helplessness had suddenly become only too ex- 
 plicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own com- 
 mitted heart. We were cut off, really, together ; 
 we were united in our danger. They had noth- 
 ing but me, and I well, I had them. It was in 
 short a magnificent chance. This chance pre- 
 sented itself to me in an image richly material. 
 I was a screen I was to stand before them. 
 The more I saw, the less they would. I began 
 to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised 
 excitement that might well, had it continued too 
 long, have turned to something like madness. 
 What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned 
 to something else altogether. It didn't last as 
 suspense it was superseded by horrible proofs. 
 Proofs, I say, yes from the moment I really 
 took hold. 
 
 This moment dated from an afternoon hour 
 that I happened to spend in the grounds with 
 the younger of my pupils alone. We had left 
 Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep win- 
 dow-seat ; he had wished to finish a book, and
 
 68 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laud- 
 able in a young man whose only defect was an 
 occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on 
 the contrary, had been alert to come out, and I 
 strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, 
 for the sun was still high and the day exception- 
 ally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we 
 went, of how, like her brother, she contrived 
 it was the charming thing in both children to 
 let me alone without appearing to drop me and 
 to accompany me without appearing to surround. 
 They were never importunate and yet never list- 
 less. My attention to them all really went to 
 seeing them amuse themselves immensely with- 
 out me : this was a spectacle they seemed ac- 
 tively to prepare and that engaged me as an 
 active admirer. I walked in a world of their 
 invention they had no occasion whatever to 
 draw upon mine ; so that my time was taken 
 only with being, for them, some remarkable 
 person or thing that the game of the moment 
 required and that was merely, thanks to my su- 
 perior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly 
 distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on 
 the present occasion ; I only remember that I 
 was something very important and very quiet 
 and that Flora was playing very hard. We were
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 69 
 
 on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately 
 begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. 
 
 Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became 
 aware that, on the other side of the Sea of 
 Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way 
 this knowledge gathered in me was the stran- 
 gest thing in the world the strangest, that is, 
 except the very much stranger in which it 
 quickly merged itself. I had sat down with 
 a piece of work for I was something or other 
 that could sit on the old stone bench which 
 overlooked the pond ; and in this position I 
 began to take in with certitude, and yet with- 
 out direct vision, the presence, at a distance, 
 of a third person. The old trees, the thick 
 shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, 
 but it was all suffused with the brightness of 
 the hot, still hour. There was no ambiguity 
 in anything ; none whatever, at least, in the 
 conviction I from one moment to another found 
 myself forming as to what I should see straight 
 before me and across the lake as a consequence 
 of raising my eyes. They were attached at this 
 juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, 
 and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort 
 not to move them till I should so have steadied 
 myself as to be able to make up my mind what
 
 70 THE TUKN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 to do. There was an alien object in view a 
 figure whose right of presence I instantly, pas- 
 sionately questioned. I recollect counting over 
 perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that 
 nothing was more natural, for instance, than the 
 appearance of one of the men about the place, 
 or even of a messenger, a postman or a trades- 
 man's boy, from the village. That reminder had 
 as little effect on my practical certitude as I was 
 conscious still even without looking of its 
 having upon the character and attitude of our 
 visitor. Nothing was more natural than that 
 these things should be the other things that 
 they absolutely were not. 
 
 Of the positive identity of the apparition I 
 would assure myself as soon as the small clock 
 of my courage should have ticked out the right 
 second; meanwhile, with an effort that was 
 already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes 
 straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, 
 was about ten yards away. My heart had stood 
 still for an instant with the wonder and terror 
 of the question whether she too would see ; and 
 I held my breath while I waited for what a cry 
 from her, what some sudden innocent sign either 
 of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, 
 but nothing came ; then, in the first place and
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 71 
 
 there is something more dire in this, I feel, than 
 in anything I have to relate I was determined 
 by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from 
 her had previously dropped ; and, in the second, 
 by the circumstance that, also within the minute, 
 she had, in her play, turned her back to the 
 water. This was her attitude when I at last 
 looked at her looked with the confirmed con- 
 viction that we were still, together, under direct 
 personal notice. She had picked up a small flat 
 piece of wood, which happened to have in it a 
 little hole that had evidently suggested to her 
 the idea of sticking in another fragment that 
 might figure as a mast and make the thing a 
 boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, 
 she was very markedly and intently attempting 
 to tighten in its place. My apprehension of 
 what she was doing sustained me so that after 
 some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then 
 I again shifted my eyes I faced what I had 
 to face.
 
 VII 
 
 I GOT hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as 
 I could ; and I can give no intelligible account 
 of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still 
 hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into 
 her arms : " They know it's too monstrous : 
 they know, they know ! " 
 
 " And what on earth ? " I felt her incre- 
 dulity as she held me. 
 
 " Why, all that we know and heaven knows 
 what else besides ! " Then, as she released me, 
 I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only 
 now with full coherency even to myself. " Two 
 hours ago, in the garden " I could scarce artic- 
 ulate " Flora saw ! " 
 
 Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a 
 blow in the stomach. " She has told you ? " she 
 panted. 
 
 " Not a word that's the horror. She kept it 
 to herself ! The child of eight, that child ! " 
 Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction 
 of it. 
 
 72
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 73 
 
 Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the 
 wider. " Then how do you know ? " 
 
 " I was there I saw with my eyes : saw that 
 she was perfectly aware." 
 
 " Do you mean aware of him? " 
 
 "No of her." I was conscious as I spoke 
 that I looked prodigious things, for I got the 
 slow reflection of them in my companion's face. 
 " Another person this time ; but a figure of 
 quite as unmistakeable horror and evil : a woman 
 in black, pale and dreadful with such an air 
 also, and such a face ! on the other side of the 
 lake. I was there with the child quiet for the 
 hour; and in the midst of it she came." 
 
 " Came how from where ? " 
 
 " From where they come from ! She just ap- 
 peared and stood there but not so near." 
 
 " And without coming nearer ? " 
 
 " Oh. for the effect and the feeling, she might 
 have been as close as you ! " 
 
 My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a 
 step. " Was she someone you've never seen ? " 
 
 " Yes. But someone the child has. Someone 
 you have." Then, to show how I had thought 
 it all out : " My predecessor the one who 
 died." 
 
 "Miss Jessel?"
 
 74 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I 
 
 She turned right and left in her distress. 
 " How can you be sure ? " 
 
 This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, 
 a flash of impatience. " Then ask Flora she's 
 sure ! " But I had no sooner spoken than I 
 caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, don't! 
 She'll say she isn't she'll lie ! " 
 
 Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinc- 
 tively to protest. "Ah, how can you?" 
 
 " Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to 
 know." 
 
 "It's only then to spare you." 
 
 " No, no there are depths, depths ! The more 
 I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I 
 see in it the more I fear. I don't know what I 
 don't see what I don't fear ! " 
 
 Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You 
 mean you're afraid of seeing her again ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ; that's nothing now ! " Then I ex- 
 plained. "It's of not seeing her." 
 
 But my companion only looked wan. " I don't 
 understand you." 
 
 "Why, it's that the child may keep it up 
 and that the child assuredly will without my 
 knowing it."
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 75 
 
 At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for 
 a moment collapsed, yet presently to pull herself 
 together again, as if from the positive force of the 
 sense of what, should we yield an inch, there 
 would really be to give way to. "Dear, dear 
 we must keep our heads ! And after all, if she 
 
 doesn't mind it ! " She even tried a grim 
 
 joke. " Perhaps she likes it ! " 
 
 " Likes such things a scrap of an infant ! " 
 
 "Isn't it just a proof of her blessed inno- 
 cence?" my friend bravely inquired. 
 
 She brought me, for the instant, almost round. 
 "Oh, we must clutch at that we must cling to 
 it ! If it isn't a proof of what you say, it's a 
 proof of God knows what ! For the woman's 
 a horror of horrors." 
 
 Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on 
 the ground ; then at last raising them, " Tell me 
 how you know," she said. 
 
 " Then you admit it's what she was ? " I 
 cried. 
 
 "Tell me how you know," my friend simply 
 repeated. 
 
 "Know? By seeing her! By the way she 
 looked." 
 
 "At you, do you mean so wickedly?" 
 
 "Dear me, no I could have borne that.
 
 76 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 She gave me never a glance. She only fixed 
 the child." 
 
 Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?" 
 
 " Ah, with such awful eyes ! " 
 
 She stared at mine as if they might really have 
 resembled them. "Do you mean of dislike?" 
 
 "God help us, no. Of something much 
 worse." 
 
 "Worse than dislike?" this left her indeed 
 at a loss. 
 
 " With a determination indescribable. With 
 a kind of fury of intention." 
 
 I made her turn pale. "Intention?" 
 
 "To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose her 
 eyes just lingering on mine gave a shudder 
 and walked to the window ; and while she 
 stood there looking out I completed my state- 
 ment. " That's what Flora knows." 
 
 After a little she turned round. " The per- 
 son was in black, you say?" 
 
 " In mourning rather poor, almost shabby. 
 But yes with extraordinary beauty. " I now 
 recognised to what I had at last, stroke by 
 stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for 
 she quite visibly weighed this. "Oh, hand- 
 some very, very," I insisted; "wonderfully 
 handsome. But infamous."
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCKEW 77 
 
 She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel 
 was infamous." She once more took my 
 hand in both her own, holding it as tight as 
 if to fortify me against the increase of alarm 
 I might draw from this disclosure. " They were 
 both infamous," she finally said. 
 
 So, for a little, we faced it once more to- 
 gether; and I found absolutely a degree of 
 help in seeing it now so straight. "I appre- 
 ciate," I said, "the great decency of your not 
 having hitherto spoken; but the time has cer- 
 tainly come to give me the whole thing." She 
 appeared to assent to this, but still only in 
 silence ; seeing which I went on : "I must 
 have it now. Of what did she die? Come, 
 there was something between them." 
 
 "There was everything." 
 
 "In spite of the difference ?" 
 
 "Oh, of their rank, their condition" she 
 brought it woefully out. ''She was a lady." 
 
 I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes she 
 was a lady." 
 
 "And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. 
 Grose. 
 
 I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, 
 in such company, on the place of a servant in 
 the scale ; but there was nothing to prevent
 
 78 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 an acceptance of my companion's own measure 
 of my predecessor's abasement. There was a 
 way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more 
 readily for my full vision on the evidence 
 of our employer's late clever, good-looking 
 " own " man ; impudent, assured, spoiled, de- 
 praved. " The fellow was a hound." 
 
 Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps 
 a little a case for a sense of shades. " I've 
 never seen one like him. He did what he 
 wished." 
 
 "With her?" 
 
 "With them all." 
 
 It was as if now in my friend's own eyes 
 Miss Jessel had again appeared. I seemed at 
 any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation 
 of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the 
 pond ; and I brought out with decision : " It 
 must have been also what she wished ! " 
 
 Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been 
 indeed, but she said at the same time : " Poor 
 woman she paid for it ! " 
 
 " Then you do know what she died of ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 "No I know nothing. I wanted not to 
 know $ I was glad enough I didn't ; and I 
 thanked heaven she was well out of this ! "
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 79 
 
 " Yet you had, then, your idea " 
 
 " Of her real reason for leaving ? Oh, yes 
 as to that. She couldn't have stayed. Fancy 
 it here for a governess ! And afterwards I 
 imagined and I still imagine. And what I 
 imagine is dreadful." 
 
 " Not so dreadful as what I do," I replied ; 
 on which I must have shown her as I was 
 indeed but too conscious a front of miserable 
 defeat. It brought out again all her compassion 
 for me, and at the renewed touch of her kind- 
 ness my power to resist broke down. I burst, 
 as I had, the other time, made her burst, into 
 tears ; she took me to her motherly breast, and 
 my lamentation overflowed. " I don't do it ! " 
 I sobbed in despair ; " I don't save or shield 
 them ! It's far worse than I dreamed they're 
 lost ! "
 
 VIII 
 
 WHAT I had said to Mrs. Grose was true 
 enough. : there were in the matter I had put 
 before her depths and possibilities that I lacked 
 resolution to sound ; so that when we met once 
 more in the wonder of it we were of a common 
 mind about the duty of resistance to extrava- 
 gant fancies. We were to keep our heads if we 
 should keep nothing else difficult indeed as 
 that might be in the face of what, in our pro- 
 digious experience, was least to be questioned. 
 Late that night, while the house slept, we had 
 another talk in my room, when she went all 
 the way with me as to its being beyond doubt 
 that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To 
 hold her perfectly in the pinch of that, I found 
 I had only to ask her how, if I had "made it 
 up," I came to be able to give, of each of the 
 persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, 
 to the last detail, their special marks a por- 
 trait on the exhibition of which she had in- 
 80
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 81 
 
 stantly recognised and named them. She wished, 
 of course, small blame to her ! to sink the 
 whole subject ; and I was quick to assure hen 
 that my own interest in it had now violently 
 taken the form of a search for the way to escape 
 from it. I encountered her on the ground of a 
 probability that with recurrence for recurrence 
 we took for granted I should get used to my 
 danger, distinctly professing that my personal 
 exposure had suddenly become the least of my 
 discomforts. It was my new suspicion that was 
 intolerable ; and yet even to this complication the 
 later hours of the day had brought a little ease. 
 
 On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had 
 of course returned to my pupils, associating the 
 right remedy for my dismay with that sense of 
 their charm which I had already found to be a 
 thing I could positively cultivate and which had 
 never failed me yet. I had simply, in other" 
 words, plunged afresh into Flora's special soci- 
 ety and there become aware it was almost a 
 luxury ! that she could put her little conscious 
 hand straight upon the spot that ached. She 
 had looked at me in sweet speculation and then 
 had accused me to my face of having "cried." 
 I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly 
 signs: but I could literally for the time, at
 
 82 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 all events rejoice, under this fathomless charity, 
 that they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze 
 into the depths' of blue of the child's eyes and 
 pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature 
 cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in prefer- 
 ence to which I naturally preferred to abjure my 
 judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. 
 I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, but I 
 could repeat to Mrs. Grose as I did there, over 
 and over, in the small hours that with their 
 voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart 
 and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, 
 everything fell to the ground but their inca- 
 pacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, 
 somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally 
 to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the 
 afternoon, by the lake, had made a miracle of 
 my show of self-possession. It was a pity to 
 be obliged to re-investigate the certitude of the 
 moment itself and repeat how it had come to me 
 as a revelation that the inconceivable communion 
 I then surprised was a matter, for either party, 
 of habit. It was a pity that I should have had 
 to quaver out again the reasons for my not hav- 
 ing, in my delusion, so much as questioned that 
 the little girl saw our visitant even as I actually 
 saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 83 
 
 just so much as she did thus see, to make 
 me suppose she didn't, and at the same time, 
 without showing anything, arrive at a guess as 
 to whether I myself did ! It was a pity that 
 I needed once more to describe the portentous 
 little activity by which she sought to divert my 
 attention the perceptible increase of movement, 
 the greater intensity of play, the singing, the 
 gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp. 
 Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was 
 nothing in it, in this review, I should have missed 
 the two or three dim elements of comfort that 
 still remained to me. I should not for instance 
 have been able to asseverate to my friend that 
 I was certain which was so much to the good 
 that I at least had not betrayed myself. I 
 should not have been prompted, by stress of 
 need, by desperation of mind, I scarce know 
 what to call it, to invoke such further aid to 
 intelligence as might spring from pushing my 
 colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, 
 bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal ; but a 
 small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still 
 sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a 
 bat ; and I remember how on this occasion for 
 the sleeping house and the concentration alike of 
 our danger and our watch seemed to help I felt
 
 84 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 the importance of giving the last jerk to the cur- 
 tain. " I don't believe anything so horrible," I 
 recollect saying ; " no, let us put it definitely, 
 my dear, that I don't. But if I did, you know, 
 there's a thing I should require now, just without 
 sparing you the least bit more oh, not a scrap, 
 come ! to get out of you. What was it you 
 had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles 
 came back, over the letter from his school, you 
 said, under my insistence, that you didn't pre- 
 tend for him that he had not literally ever been 
 'bad'? He has not literally 'ever,' in these 
 weeks that I myself have lived with him and 
 so closely watched him; he has been an imper- 
 turbable little prodigy of delightful, loveable 
 goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have 
 made the claim for him if you had not, as it 
 happened, seen an exception to take. What was 
 your exception, and to what passage in your per- 
 sonal observation of him did you refer ? " 
 
 It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity 
 was not our note, and, at any rate, before the grey 
 dawn admonished us to separate I had got my 
 answer. What my friend had had in mind 
 proved to be immensely to the purpose. It was 
 neither more nor less than the circumstance that 
 for a period of several months Quint and the boy
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 85 
 
 Lad been perpetually together. It was in fact the 
 very appropriate truth that she had ventured to 
 criticise the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, 
 of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on 
 the subject as a frank overture to Miss Jessel. 
 Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, 
 requested her to mind her business, and the good 
 woman had, on this, directly approached little 
 Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, 
 was that she liked to see young gentlemen not 
 forget their station. 
 
 I pressed again, of course, at this. "You re- 
 minded him that Quint was only a base menial ? " 
 
 " As you might say ! And it was his answer, 
 for one thing, that was bad." 
 
 "And for another thing?" I waited. "He 
 repeated your words to Quint? " 
 
 "No, not that. It's just what he wouldn't!'" 
 she could still impress upon me. " I was sure, at 
 any rate," she added, " that he didn't. But he 
 denied certain occasions." 
 
 " What occasions ? " 
 
 " When they had been about together quite as 
 if Quint were his tutor and a very grand one 
 and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When 
 he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent 
 hours with him."
 
 86 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "He then prevaricated about it he said he 
 hadn't ? " Her assent was clear enough to cause 
 me to add in a moment : "I see. He lied." 
 
 " Oh ! " Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a 
 suggestion that it didn't matter ; which indeed 
 she backed up by a further remark. " You see, 
 after all, Miss Jessel didn't mind. She didn't 
 forbid him." 
 
 I considered. " Did he put that to you as a 
 justification ? " 
 
 At this she dropped again. "No, he never 
 spoke of it." 
 
 " Never mentioned her in connection with 
 Quint ? " 
 
 She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming 
 out. " Well, he didn't show anything. He 
 denied," she repeated; "he denied." 
 
 Lord, how I pressed her now I " So that you 
 could see he knew what was between the two 
 wretches ? " 
 
 " I don't know I don't know ! " the poor 
 woman groaned. 
 
 " You do know, you dear thing," I replied ; 
 " only you haven't my dreadful boldness of mind, 
 and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty 
 and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, 
 when you had, without my aid, to flounder about
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 87 
 
 in silence, most of all made you miserable. But 
 I shall get it out of you yet ! There was some- 
 thing in the boy that suggested to you," I con- 
 tinued, "that he covered and concealed their re- 
 lation." 
 
 " Oh, he couldn't prevent " 
 
 " Your learning the truth ? I dare say ! But, 
 heavens," I fell, with vehemence, a-thinking, 
 " what it shows that they must, to that extent, 
 have succeeded in making of him ! " 
 
 " Ah, nothing that's not nice now ! " Mrs. Grose 
 lugubriously pleaded. 
 
 " I don't wonder you looked queer," I per- 
 sisted, " when I mentioned to you the letter from 
 his school ! " 
 
 " I doubt if I looked as queer as you ! " she 
 retorted with homely force. " And if he was so 
 bad then as that comes to, how is he such an 
 angel now ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed and if he was a fiend at school ! 
 How, how, how ? Well," I said in my torment, 
 " you must put it to me again, but I shall not be 
 able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to 
 me again ! " I cried in a way that made my friend 
 stare. "There are directions in which I must 
 not for the present let myself go." Meanwhile 
 I returned to her first example the one to
 
 88 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 which she had just previously referred of the 
 boy's happy capacity for an occasional slip. " If 
 Quint on your remonstrance at the time you 
 speak of was a base menial, one of the things 
 Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was 
 that you were another." Again her admission 
 was so adequate that I continued : " And you 
 forgave him that ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't you?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " And we exchanged there, in the 
 stillness, a sound of the oddest amusement. Then 
 I went on : " At all events, while he was with 
 the man " 
 
 "Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited 
 them all ! " 
 
 It suited me too, I felt, only too well ; by 
 which I mean that it suited exactly the particu- 
 larly deadly view I was in the very act of for- 
 bidding myself to entertain. But I so far suc- 
 ceeded in checking the expression of this view 
 that I will throw, just here, no further light on 
 it than may be offered by the mention of my 
 final observation to Mrs. Grose. " His having 
 lied and been impudent are, I confess, less en- 
 gaging specimens than I had hoped to have 
 from you of the outbreak in him of the little 
 natural man. Still," I mused, "they must do,
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 89 
 
 for they make me feel more than ever that I 
 must watch." 
 
 It made me blush, the next minute, to see in 
 my friend's face how much more unreservedly 
 she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck 
 me as presenting to my own tenderness an occa- 
 sion for doing. This came out when, at the 
 schoolroom door, she quitted me. "Surely you 
 don't accuse him " 
 
 "Of carrying on an intercourse that he con- 
 ceals from me ? Ah, remember that, until further 
 evidence, I now accuse nobody." Then, before 
 shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her 
 own place, " I must just wait," I wound up.
 
 IX 
 
 I WAITED and waited, and the days, as they 
 elapsed, took something from my consternation. 
 A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant 
 sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, 
 sufficed to give to grievous fancies and even to 
 odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge. 
 I have spoken of the surrender to their ex- 
 traordinary childish grace as a thing I could 
 actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if I 
 neglected now to address myself to this source 
 for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I 
 can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle 
 against my new lights ; it would doubtless have 
 been, however, a greater tension still had it not 
 been so frequently successful. I used to wonder 
 how my little charges could help guessing that 
 I thought strange things about them; and the 
 circumstance that these things only made them 
 more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to 
 keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 91 
 
 should see that they were so immensely more 
 interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all 
 events, as in meditation I so often did, any cloud- 
 ing of their innocence could only be blameless 
 and foredoomed as they were a reason the more 
 for taking risks. There were moments when, by 
 an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching 
 them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon 
 as I had done so I used to say to myself : " What 
 will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too 
 much ? " It would have been easy to get into a 
 sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray ; 
 but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace 
 that I could still enjoy was that the immediate 
 charm of my companions was a beguilement still 
 effective even under the shadow of the possibility 
 that it was studied. For if it occurred to me that 
 I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little 
 outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too 
 I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queer- 
 ness in the traceable increase of their own demon- 
 strations. 
 
 They were at this period extravagantly and 
 preternaturally fond of me ; which, after all, I 
 could reflect, was no more than a graceful response 
 in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. 
 The homage of which they were so lavish sue-
 
 92 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 ceeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if 
 I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally 
 to catch them at a purpose in it. They had 
 never, I think, wanted to do so many things for 
 their poor protectress; I mean though they got 
 their lessons better and better, which was natu- 
 rally what would please her most in the way of 
 diverting, entertaining, surprising her ; reading 
 her passages, telling her stories, acting her cha- 
 rades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as ani- 
 mals and historical characters, and above all aston- 
 ishing her by the " pieces " they had secretly got 
 by heart and could interminably recite. I should 
 never get to the bottom were I to let myself go 
 even now of the prodigious private commentary, 
 all under still more private correction, with which, 
 in these days, I overs cored their full hours. They 
 had shown me from the first a facility for every- 
 thing, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, 
 achieved remarkable flights. They got their little 
 tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from 
 the mere exuberance of the gift, in the most unim- 
 posed little miracles of memory. They not only 
 popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as 
 Shakespeareans, astronomers, and navigators. 
 This was so singularly the case that it had pre- 
 sumably much to do with the fact as to which,
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 93 
 
 at the present day, I am at a loss for a different 
 explanation: I allude to my unnatural composure 
 on the subject of another school for Miles. What 
 I remember is that I was content not, for the time, 
 to open the question, and that contentment must 
 have sprung from the sense of his perpetually 
 striking show of cleverness. He was too clever for 
 a bad governess, for a parson's daughter, to spoil; 
 and the strangest if not the brightest thread in the 
 pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the im- 
 pression I might have got, if I had dared to work 
 it out, that he was under some influence operating 
 in his small intellectual life as a tremendous in- 
 citement. 
 
 If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a 
 boy could postpone school, it was at least as 
 marked that for such a boy to have been " kicked 
 out " by a school-master was a mystification with- 
 out end. Let me add that in their company now 
 
 and I was careful almost never to be out of it 
 
 I could follow no scent very far. We lived in 
 a cloud of music and love and success and private 
 theatricals. The musical sense in each of the 
 children was of the quickest, but the elder in es- 
 pecial had a marvellous knack of catching and 
 repeating. The schoolroom piano broke into all 
 gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were
 
 94 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of 
 them going out in the highest spirits in order to 
 " come in " as something new. I had had brothers 
 myself, and it was no revelation to me that little 
 girls could be slavish idolaters of little boys. What 
 surpassed everything was that there was a little 
 boy in the world who could have for the inferior 
 age, sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. 
 They were extraordinarily at one, and to say that 
 they never either quarrelled or complained is to 
 make the note of praise coarse for their quality of 
 sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped 
 into coarseness, I perhaps came across traces of 
 little understandings between them by which one 
 of them should keep me occupied while the other 
 slipped away. There is a naif side, I suppose, in 
 all diplomacy; but if my pupils practised upon 
 me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness. 
 It was all in the other quarter that, after a lull, 
 the grossness broke out. 
 
 I find that I really hang back ; but I must 
 take my plunge. In going on with the record 
 of what was hideous at Ely, I not only challenge 
 the most liberal faith for which I little care ; 
 but and this is another matter I renew what 
 I myself suffered, I again push my way through 
 it to the end. There came suddenly an hour
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCEEW 95 
 
 after which, as I look back, the affair seems to 
 me to have been all pure suffering; but I have 
 at least reached the heart of it, and the straight- 
 est road out is doubtless to advance. One even- 
 ing with nothing to lead up or to prepare it 
 I felt the cold touch of the impression that 
 had breathed on me the night of my arrival and 
 which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, 
 I should probably have made little of in memory 
 had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. 
 I had not gone to bed ; I sat reading by a couple 
 of candles. There was a roomful of old books 
 at Bly last-century fiction, some of it, which, 
 to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, 
 but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, 
 had reached the sequestered home and appealed 
 to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I re- 
 member that the book I had in my hand was 
 Fielding's Amelia; also that I was wholly awake. 
 I recall further both a general conviction that it 
 was horribly late and a particular objection to 
 looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the 
 white curtain draping, in the fashion of those 
 days, the head of Flora's little bed, shrouded, as 
 I had assured myself long before, the perfection 
 of childish rest. I recollect in short that, though 
 I was deeply interested in my author, I found
 
 96 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 myself, at the turn of a page and with his spell 
 all scattered, looking straight up from him and 
 hard at the door of my room. There was a 
 moment during which I listened, reminded of 
 the faint sense I had had, the first night, of there 
 being something undefineably astir in the house, 
 and noted the soft breath of the open casement 
 just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with all 
 the marks of a deliberation that must have 
 seemed magnificent had there been anyone to 
 admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, 
 and, taking a candle, went straight out of the 
 room and, from the passage, on which my light 
 made little impression, noiselessly closed and 
 locked the door. 
 
 I can say now neither what determined nor 
 what guided me, but I went straight along the 
 lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within 
 sight of the tall window that presided over the 
 great turn of the staircase. At this point I pre- 
 cipitately found myself aware of three things. 
 They were practically simultaneous, yet they had 
 flashes of succession. My candle, under a bold 
 flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the un- 
 covered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest 
 morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, 
 the next instant, I saw that there was someone
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 97 
 
 on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required 
 no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third 
 encounter with Quint. The apparition had 
 reached the landing half-way up and was there- 
 fore on the spot nearest the window, where at 
 sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly 
 as it had fixed me from the tower and from the 
 garden. He knew me as well as I knew him ; 
 and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer 
 in the high glass and another on the polish of the 
 oak stair below, we faced each other in our com- 
 mon intensity. He was absolutely, on this occa- 
 sion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence. 
 But that was not the wonder of wonders ; I 
 reserve this distinction for quite another circum- 
 stance : the circumstance that dread had unmis- 
 takeably quitted me and that there was nothing in 
 me there that didn't meet and measure him. 
 
 I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary 
 moment, but I had, thank God, no terror. And 
 he knew I had not I found myself at the end 
 of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, 
 in a fierce rigour of confidence, that if I stood 
 my ground a minute I should cease for the 
 time, at least to have him to reckon with ; and 
 during the minute, accordingly, the thing was as 
 human and hideous as a real interview : hideous
 
 98 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 just because it was human, as human as to have 
 met alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, 
 some enemy, some adventurer, some criminal. It 
 was the dead silence of our long gaze at such 
 close quarters that gave the whole horror, huge 
 as it was, its only note of the unnatural. If I 
 had met a murderer in such a place and at such 
 an hour, we still at least would have spoken. 
 Something would have passed, in life, between 
 us ; if nothing had passed one of us would have 
 moved. The moment was so prolonged that it 
 would have taken but little more to make me 
 doubt if even /were in life. I can't express what 
 followed it save by saying that the silence itself 
 which was indeed in a manner an attestation 
 of my strength became the element into which 
 I saw the figure disappear ; in which I definitely 
 saw it turn as I might have seen the low wretch 
 to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of 
 an order, and pass, with my eyes on the villain- 
 ous back that no hunch could have more dis- 
 figured, straight down the staircase and into the 
 darkness in which the next bend was lost.
 
 I REMAINED awhile at the top of the stair, but 
 with the effect presently of understanding that 
 when my visitor had gone, he had gone : then I 
 returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw 
 there by the light of the candle I had left burning 
 was that Flora's little bed was empty; and on 
 this I caught my breath with all the terror that, 
 five minutes before, I had been able to resist. I 
 dashed at the place in which I had left her lying 
 and over which (for the small silk counterpane 
 and the sheets were disarranged) the white cur- 
 tains had been deceivingly pulled forward ; then 
 my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an 
 answering sound: I perceived an agitation of 
 the window-blind, and the child, ducking down, 
 emerged rosily from the other side of it. She 
 stood there in so much of her candour and so 
 little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet 
 and the golden glow of her curls. She looked 
 intensely grave, and I had never had such a sense
 
 100 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of 
 which had just been so prodigious) as on my 
 consciousness that she addressed me with a re- 
 proach. " You naughty : where have you been ? " 
 instead of challenging her own irregularity I 
 found myself arraigned and explaining. She her- 
 self explained, for that matter, with the loveliest, 
 eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as 
 she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had 
 jumped up to see what had become of me. I had 
 dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back 
 into my chair feeling then, and then only, a 
 little faint ; and she had pattered straight over to 
 me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself 
 to be held with the flame of the candle full in the 
 wonderful little face that was still flushed with 
 sleep. I remember closing my eyes an instant, 
 yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of 
 something beautiful that shone out of the blue of 
 her own. " You were looking for me out of the 
 window?" I said. "You thought I might be 
 walking in the grounds?" 
 
 " Well, you know, I thought someone was " 
 she never blanched as she smiled out that at me. 
 
 Oh, how I looked at her now ! "And did you 
 see anyone ? " 
 
 "Ah, wo/" she returned, almost with the full
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 101 
 
 privilege of childish inconsequence, resentfully, 
 though with a long sweetness in her little drawl 
 of the negative. 
 
 At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I 
 absolutely believed she lied ; and if I once more 
 closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the 
 three or four possible ways in which I might take 
 this up. One of these, for a moment, tempted 
 me with such singular intensity that, to with- 
 stand it, I must have gripped my little girl with 
 a spasm that, wonderfully, she submitted to 
 without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not 
 break out at her on the spot and have it all over ? 
 give it to her straight in her lovely little 
 lighted face ? " You see, you see, you know that 
 you do and that you already quite suspect I 
 believe it ; therefore why not frankly confess 
 it to me, so that we may at least live with it 
 together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness 
 of our fate, where we are and what it means ? " 
 This solicitation dropped, alas, as it came : if I 
 could immediately have succumbed to it I might 
 
 have spared myself well you'll see what. 
 
 Instead of succumbing I sprang again to my feet, 
 looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle 
 way. "Why did you pull the curtain over the 
 place to make me think you were still there?"
 
 102 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 Flora luminously considered; after which, 
 with her little divine smile : " Because I don't 
 like to frighten you ! " 
 
 " But if I had, by your idea, gone out ? " 
 
 She absolutely declined to be puzzled ; she 
 turned her eyes to the flame of the candle as if 
 the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate 
 as impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. 
 " Oh, but you know," she quite adequately an- 
 swered, "that you might come back, you dear, 
 and that you have!" And after a little, when 
 she had got into bed, I had, for a long time, by 
 almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to 
 prove that I recognised the pertinence of my 
 return. 
 
 You may imagine the general complexion, 
 from that moment, of my nights. I repeatedly 
 sat up till I didn't know when ; I selected mo- 
 ments when my room-mate unmistakeably slept, 
 and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in the 
 passage and even pushed as far as to where I 
 had last met Quint. But I never met him 
 there again ; and I may as well say at once that 
 I on no other occasion saw him in the house. 
 I just missed, on the staircase, on the other 
 hand, a different adventure. Looking down it 
 from the top I once recognised the presence of
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 103 
 
 a woman seated on one of the lower steps with 
 her back presented to me, her body half bowed 
 and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her 
 hands. I had been there but an instant, how- 
 ever, when she vanished without looking round 
 at me. I knew, none the less, exactly what 
 dreadful face she had to show ; and I wondered 
 whether, if instead of being above I had been 
 below, I should have had, for going up, the 
 same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, 
 there continued to be plenty of chance for 
 nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest 
 encounter with that gentleman they were all 
 numbered now I had an alarm that perilously 
 skirted it and that indeed, from the particular 
 quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my 
 sharpest shock. It was precisely the first 
 night during this series that, weary with watch- 
 ing, I had felt that I might again without laxity 
 lay myself down at my old hour. I slept im- 
 mediately and, as I afterwards knew, till about 
 one o'clock ; but when I woke it was to sit 
 straight up, as completely roused as if a hand 
 had shook me. I had left a light burning, but 
 it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty 
 that Flora had extinguished it. This brought 
 me to my feet and straight, in the darkness,
 
 104 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 to her bed, which I found she had left. A 
 glance at the window enlightened me further, 
 and the striking of a match completed the 
 picture. 
 
 The child had again got up this time blow- 
 ing out the taper, and had again, for some pur- 
 pose of observation or response, squeezed in 
 behind the blind and was peering out into the 
 night. That she now saw as she had not, I 
 had satisfied myself, the previous time was 
 proved to me by the fact that she was dis- 
 turbed neither by my re-illumination nor by the 
 haste I made to get into slippers and into a 
 wrap. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she evi- 
 dently rested on the sill the casement opened 
 forward and gave herself up. There was a 
 great still moon to help her, and this fact had 
 counted in my quick decision. She was face 
 to face with the apparition we had met at the 
 lake, and could now communicate with it as 
 she had not then been able to do. What I, on 
 my side, had to care for was, without disturb- 
 ing her, to reach, from the corridor, some other 
 window in the same quarter. I got to the door 
 without her hearing me ; I got out of it, closed 
 it and listened, from the other side, for some 
 sound from her. While I stood in the passage
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 105 
 
 I had my eyes on her brother's door, which 
 was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, 
 produced in me a renewal of the strange im- 
 pulse that I lately spoke of as my temptation. 
 What if I should go straight in and march to 
 his window? what if, by risking to his boy- 
 ish bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I 
 should throw across the rest of the mystery the 
 long halter of my boldness ? 
 
 This thought held me sufficiently to make me 
 cross to his threshold and pause again. I pre- 
 ternaturally listened ; I figured to myself what 
 might portentously be ; I wondered if his bed 
 were also empty and he too were secretly at 
 watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the 
 end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet ; 
 he might be innocent ; the risk was hideous ; I 
 turned away. There was a figure in the grounds 
 a figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with 
 whom Flora was engaged ; but it was not the 
 visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated 
 afresh, but on other grounds and only a few 
 seconds; then I had made my choice. There 
 were empty rooms at Ely, and it was only a 
 question of choosing the right one. The right 
 one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower 
 one though high above the gardens in the
 
 106 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 solid corner of the house that I have spoken of as 
 the old tower. This was a large, square chamber, 
 arranged with some state as a bedroom, the ex- 
 travagant size of which made it so inconvenient 
 that it had not for years, though kept by Mrs. 
 Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had 
 often admired it and I knew my way about in it ; 
 I had only, after just faltering at the first chill 
 gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt 
 as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achiev- 
 ing this transit, I uncovered the glass without a 
 sound and, applying my face to the pane, was 
 able, the darkness without being much less than 
 within, to see that I commanded the right direc- 
 tion. Then I saw something more. The moon 
 made the night extraordinarily penetrable and 
 showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by 
 distance, who stood there motionless and as if 
 fascinated, looking up to where I had appeared 
 looking, that is, not so much straight at me as at 
 something that was apparently above me. There 
 was clearly another person above me there was 
 a person on the tower ; but the presence on the 
 lawn was not in the least what I had conceived 
 and had confidently hurried to meet. The pres- 
 ence on the lawn I felt sick as I made it out 
 was poor little Miles himself.
 
 XI 
 
 IT was not till late next day that I spoke to 
 Mrs. Grose ; the rigour with which I kept my 
 pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet 
 her privately, and the more as we each felt the 
 importance of not provoking -on the part of 
 the servants quite as much as on that of the 
 children any suspicion of a secret flurry or 
 of a discussion of mysteries. I drew a great 
 security in this particular from her mere smooth 
 aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face 
 to pass on to others my horrible confidences. 
 She believed me, I was sure, absolutely : if she 
 hadn't I don't know what would have become 
 of me, for I couldn't have borne the business 
 alone. But she was a magnificent monument 
 to the blessing of a want of imagination, and 
 if she could see in our little charges nothing 
 but their beauty and amiability, their happiness 
 and cleverness, she had no direct communication 
 with the sources of my trouble. If they had 
 107
 
 108 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 been at all visibly blighted or battered, she 
 would doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, 
 haggard enough to match them ; as matters 
 stood, however, I could feel her, when she 
 surveyed them, with her large white arms folded 
 and the habit of serenity in all her look, thank 
 the Lord's mercy that if they were ruined the 
 pieces would still serve. Flights of fancy gave 
 place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow, 
 and I had already begun to perceive how, with 
 the development of the conviction that as 
 time went on without a public accident our 
 young things could, after all, look out for 
 themselves, she addressed her greatest solicitude 
 to the sad case presented by their instructress. 
 That, for myself, was a sound simplification : 
 I could engage that, to the world, my face 
 should tell no tales, but it would have been, 
 in the conditions, an immense added strain to 
 find myself anxious about hers. 
 
 At the hour I now speak of she had joined 
 me, under pressure, on the terrace, where, with 
 the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was 
 now agreeable ; and we sat there together while, 
 before us, at a distance, but within call if we 
 wished, the children strolled to and fro in one 
 of their most manageable moods. They moved
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 109 
 
 slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the 
 boy, as they went, reading aloud from a story- 
 book and passing his arm round his sister to 
 keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched 
 them with positive placidity ; then I caught 
 the suppressed intellectual creak with which 
 she conscientiously turned to take from me a 
 view of the back of the tapestry. I had made 
 her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was 
 an odd recognition of my superiority my 
 accomplishments and my function in her pa- 
 tience under my pain. She offered her mind 
 to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a 
 witch's broth and proposed it with assurance, 
 she would have held out a large clean saucepan. 
 This had become thoroughly her attitude by 
 the time that, in my recital of the events of the 
 night, I reached the point of what Miles had 
 said to me when, after seeing him, at such a 
 monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where 
 he happened now to be, I had gone down to 
 bring him in ; choosing then, at the window, 
 with a concentrated need of not alarming the 
 house, rather that method than a signal more 
 resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little 
 doubt of my small hope of representing with 
 success even to her actual sympathy my sense
 
 110 THE TURN" OF THE SCREW 
 
 of the real splendour of the little inspiration 
 with which, after I had got him into the house, 
 the boy met my final articulate challenge. As 
 soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the 
 terrace, he had come to me as straight as possi- 
 ble ; on which I had taken his hand without a 
 word and led him, through the dark spaces, up 
 the staircase where Quint had so hungrily hov- 
 ered for him, along the lobby where I had 
 listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken 
 room. 
 
 Not a sound, on the way, had passed between 
 us, and I had wondered oh, how I had won- 
 dered ! if he were groping about in his little 
 mind for something plausible and not too gro- 
 tesque. It would tax his invention, certainly, 
 and I felt, this time, over his real embarrass- 
 ment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a 
 sharp trap for the inscrutable ! He couldn't 
 play any longer at innocence ; so how the deuce 
 would he get out of it? There beat in me in- 
 deed, with the passionate throb of this question, 
 an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce / 
 should. I was confronted at last, as never yet, 
 with all the risk attached even now to sounding 
 my own horrid note. I remember in fact that 
 as we pushed into his little chamber, where the
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 111 
 
 bed had not been slept in at all and the window, 
 uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so 
 clear that there was no need of striking a match 
 I remember how I suddenly dropped, sank 
 upon the edge of the bed from the force of the 
 idea that he must know how he really, as they 
 say, "had" me. He could do what he liked, 
 with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I 
 should continue to defer to the old tradition of 
 the criminality of those caretakers of the young 
 who minister to superstitions and fears. He 
 " had " me indeed, and in a cleft stick ; for who 
 would ever absolve me, who would consent that 
 I should go unhung, if, by the faintest tremor 
 of an overture, I were the first to introduce 
 into our perfect intercourse an element so dire ? 
 No, no : it was useless to attempt to convey to 
 Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to 
 attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, 
 stiff brush in the dark, he fairly shook me with 
 admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind 
 and merciful ; never, never yet had I placed on 
 his little shoulders hands of such tenderness 
 as those with which, while I rested against 
 the bed, I held him there well under fire. I had 
 no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to 
 him.
 
 112 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "You must tell me now and all the truth. 
 What did you go out for? What were you 
 doing there ? " 
 
 I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites 
 of his beautiful eyes, and the uncovering of his 
 little teeth shine to me in the dusk. " If I tell 
 you why, will you understand ? " My heart, at 
 this, leaped into my mouth. Would he tell me 
 why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, 
 and I was aware of replying only with a vague, 
 repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness 
 itself, and while I wagged my head at him he 
 stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. 
 It was his brightness indeed that gave me a 
 respite. Would it be so great if he were really 
 going to tell me ? " Well," he said at last, " just 
 exactly in order that you should do this." 
 
 "Do what?" 
 
 "Think me for a change bad!" I shall 
 never forget the sweetness and gaiety with 
 which he brought out the word, nor how, on 
 top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It 
 was practically the end of everything. I met 
 his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him 
 for a minute in my arms, the most stupendous 
 effort not to cry. He had given exactly the 
 account of himself that permitted least of my
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 113 
 
 going behind it, and it was only with the effect 
 of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I 
 presently glanced about the room, I could say 
 
 "Then you didn't undress at all?" 
 
 He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at 
 all. I sat up and read." 
 
 " And when did you go down ? " 
 
 " At midnight. When I'm bad I am bad ! " 
 
 " I see, I see it's charming. But how could 
 you be sure I would know it?" 
 
 "Oh, I arranged that with Flora." His 
 answers rang out with a readiness ! " She was 
 to get up and look out." 
 
 "Which is what she did do." It was I who 
 fell into the trap ! 
 
 "So she disturbed you, and, to see what she 
 was looking at, you also looked you saw." 
 
 "While you," I concurred, "caught your 
 death in the night air ! " 
 
 He literally bloomed so from this exploit that 
 he could afford radiantly to assent. " How 
 otherwise should I have been bad enough ? " he 
 asked. Then, after another embrace, the in- 
 cident and our interview closed on my recogni- 
 tion of all the reserves of goodness that, for 
 his joke, he had been able to draw upon.
 
 XII 
 
 THE particular impression I had received proved 
 in the morning light, I repeat, not quite success- 
 fully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I rein- 
 forced it with the mention of still another remark 
 that he had made before we separated. " It all 
 lies in half-a-dozen words," I said to her, " words 
 that really settle the matter. ' Think, you know, 
 what I might do ! ' He threw that off to show 
 me how good he is. He knows down to the 
 ground what he ' might ' do. That's what he 
 gave them a taste of at school." 
 
 " Lord, you do change ! " cried my friend. 
 
 "I don't change I simply make it out. The 
 four, depend upon it, perpetually meet. If on 
 either of these last nights you had been with 
 either child, you would clearly have understood. 
 The more I've watched and waited the more I've 
 felt that if there were nothing else to make it sure 
 it would be made so by the systematic silence 
 of each. Never, by a slip of the tongue, have 
 114
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 115 
 
 they so much as alluded to either of their old 
 friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his 
 expulsion. Oh yes, we may sit here and look at 
 them, and they may show off to us there to their 
 fill ; but even while they pretend to be lost in 
 their fairy-tale they're steeped in their vision of 
 the dead restored. He's not reading to her," 
 I declared; "they're talking of them they're 
 talking horrors ! I go on, I know, as if I were 
 crazy ; and it's a wonder I'm not. What I've 
 seen would have made you so ; but it has only 
 made me more lucid, made me get hold of still 
 other things." 
 
 My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the 
 charming creatures who were victims of it, pass- 
 ing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, 
 gave my colleague something to hold on by; 
 and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring 
 in the breath of my passion, she covered them 
 still with her eyes. " Of what other things have 
 you got hold?" 
 
 "Why, of the very things that have de- 
 lighted, fascinated, and yet, at bottom, as I now 
 so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. 
 Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely 
 unnatural goodness. It's a game," I went on; 
 " it's a policy and a fraud ! "
 
 116 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 " On the part of little darlings ? " 
 
 "As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as 
 that seems ! " The very act of bringing it out 
 really helped me to trace it follow it all up 
 and piece it all together. "They haven't been 
 good they've only been absent. It has been 
 easy to live with them, because they're simply 
 leading a life of their own. They're not mine 
 they're not ours. They're his and they're 
 hers ! " 
 
 " Quint's and that woman's ? " 
 
 " Quint's and that woman's. They want to 
 get to them." 
 
 Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to 
 study them ! " But for what ? " 
 
 "For the love of all the evil that, in those 
 dreadful days, the pair put into them. And to 
 ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work 
 of demons, is what brings the others back." 
 
 " Laws ! " said my friend under her breath. 
 The exclamation was homely, but it revealed a 
 real acceptance of my further proof of what, in 
 the bad time for there had been a worse even 
 than this! must have occurred. There could 
 have been no such justification for me as the 
 plain assent of her experience to whatever depth 
 of depravity I found credible in our brace of
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 117 
 
 scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of 
 memory that she brought out after a moment: 
 " They were rascals ! But what can they now 
 do ? " she pursued. 
 
 " Do ? " I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, 
 as they passed at their distance, paused an in- 
 stant in their walk and looked at us. "Don't 
 they do enough ? " I demanded in a lower tone, 
 while the children, having smiled and nodded 
 and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibi- 
 tion. We were held by it a minute ; then I 
 answered : " They can destroy them ! " At this 
 my companion did turn, but the inquiry she 
 launched was a silent one, the effect of which 
 was to make me more explicit. " They don't 
 know, as yet, quite how but they're trying 
 hard. They're seen only across, as it were, and 
 beyond in strange places and on high places, 
 the top of towers, the roof of houses, the out- 
 side of windows, the further edge of pools; but 
 there's a deep design, on either side, to shorten 
 the distance and overcome the obstacle ; and the 
 success of the tempters is only a question of 
 time. They've only to keep to their sugges- 
 tions of danger." 
 
 "For the children to come?" 
 
 " And perish in the attempt ! " Mrs. Grose
 
 118 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 slowly got up, and I scrupulously added : " Un- 
 less, of course, we can prevent ! " 
 
 Standing there before me while I kept my 
 seat, she visibly turned things over. "Their 
 uncle must do the preventing. He must take 
 them away." 
 
 " And who's to make him ? " 
 
 She had been scanning the distance, but she 
 now dropped on me a foolish face. "You, 
 Miss." 
 
 " By writing to him that his house is poisoned 
 and his little nephew and niece mad?" 
 
 " But if they are, Miss ? " 
 
 "And if I am myself, you mean? That's 
 charming news to be sent him by a governess 
 whose prime undertaking was to give him no 
 worry." 
 
 Mrs. Grose considered, following the children 
 again. " Yes, he do hate worry. That was the 
 great reason " 
 
 " Why those fiends took him in so long ? No 
 doubt, though his indifference must have been 
 awful. As I'm not a fiend, at any rate, I 
 shouldn't take him in." 
 
 My companion, after an instant and for all 
 answer, sat down again and grasped my arm. 
 "Make him at any rate come to you."
 
 THE TUBN OP THE SCREW 119 
 
 I stared. " To me ? " I had a sudden fear of 
 what she might do. " ' Him ' ? " 
 
 "He ought to be here he ought to help." 
 I quickly rose, and I think I must have 
 shown her a queerer face than ever yet. " You 
 see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her 
 eyes on my face she evidently couldn't. Instead 
 of it even as a woman reads another she 
 could see what I myself saw: his derision, his 
 amusement, his contempt for the break-down of 
 my resignation at being left alone and for the 
 fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his 
 attention to my slighted charms. She didn't 
 know no one knew how proud I had been 
 to serve him and to stick to our terms ; yet 
 she none the less took the measure, I think, of 
 the warning I now gave her. "If you should 
 so lose your head as to appeal to him for 
 
 me " 
 
 She was really frightened. " Yes, Miss ? " 
 "I would leave, on the spot, both him and 
 you."
 
 XIII 
 
 IT was all very well to join them, but speak- 
 ing w> them proved quite as much as ever an 
 effort beyond my strength offered, in close 
 quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. 
 This situation continued a month, and with new 
 aggravations and particular notes, the note above 
 all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic con- 
 sciousness on the part of my pupils. It was 
 not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, 
 my mere infernal imagination : it was absolutely 
 traceable that they were aware of my predica- 
 ment and that this strange relation made, in 
 a manner, for a long time, the air in which 
 we moved. I don't mean that they had their 
 tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, 
 for that was not one of their dangers : I do 
 mean, on the other hand, that the element of 
 the unnamed and untouched became, between 
 us, greater than any other, and that so much 
 avoidance could not have been so successfully 
 
 120
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 121 
 
 effected without a great deal of tacit arrange- 
 ment. It was as if, at moments, we were per- 
 petually coming into sight of subjects before 
 which we must stop short, turning suddenly out 
 of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing 
 with a little bang that made us look at each 
 other for, like all bangs, it was something 
 louder than we had intended the doors we 
 had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to 
 Rome, and there were times when it might have 
 struck us that almost every branch of study or 
 subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. 
 Forbidden ground was the question of the re- 
 turn of the dead in general and of whatever, in 
 especial, might survive, in memory, of the friends 
 little children had lost. There were days when 
 I could have sworn that one of them had, with 
 a small invisible nudge, said to the other : " She 
 thinks she'll do it this time but she won't!" 
 To "do it" would have been to indulge for 
 instance and for once in a way in some direct 
 reference to the lady who had prepared them for 
 my discipline. They had a delightful endless 
 appetite for passages in my own history, to which 
 I had again and again treated them ; they were 
 in possession of everything that had ever hap- 
 pened to me, had had, with every circumstance
 
 122 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 the story of my smallest adventures and of those 
 of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the 
 dog at home, as well as many particulars of the 
 eccentric nature of my father, of the furniture 
 and arrangement of our house, and of the con- 
 versation of the old women of our village. There 
 were things enough, taking one with another, to 
 chatter about, if one went very fast and knew by 
 instinct when to go round. They pulled with 
 an art of their own the strings of my invention 
 and my memory ; and nothing else perhaps, when 
 I thought of such occasions afterwards, gave me 
 so the suspicion of being watched from under 
 cover. It was in any case over my life, my past, 
 and my friends alone that we could take any- 
 thing like our ease a state of affairs that led 
 them sometimes without the least pertinence to 
 break out into sociable reminders. I was invited 
 with no visible connection to repeat afresh 
 Goody Gosling's celebrated mot or to confirm the 
 details already supplied as to the cleverness of 
 the vicarage pony. 
 
 It was partly at such junctures as these and 
 partly at quite different ones that, with the 
 turn my matters had now taken, my predica- 
 ment, as I have called it, grew most sensible. 
 The fact that the days passed for me without
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 123 
 
 another encounter ought, it would have ap- 
 peared, to have done something toward sooth- 
 ing my nerves. Since the light brush, that 
 second night on the upper landing, of the pres- 
 ence of a woman at the foot of the stair, I had 
 seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, 
 that one had better not have seen. There was 
 many a corner round which I expected to come 
 upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a 
 merely sinister way, would have favoured the 
 appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had 
 turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had 
 dropped upon Ely and had blown out half our 
 lights. The place, with its grey sky and withered 
 garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead 
 leaves, was like a theatre after the performance 
 all strewn with crumpled playbills. There 
 were exactly states of the air, conditions of sound 
 and of stillness, unspeakable impressions of the 
 kind of ministering moment, that brought back 
 to me, long enough to catch it, the feeling of the 
 medium in which, that June evening out-of-doors, 
 I had had my first sight of Quint, and in which, 
 too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing 
 him through the window, looked for him in vain 
 in the circle of shrubbery. I recognised the 
 signs, the portents I recognised the moment,
 
 124 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 the spot. But they remained unaccompanied and 
 empty, and I continued unmolested ; if unmo- 
 lested one could call a young woman whose sensi- 
 bility had, in the most extraordinary fashion, not 
 declined but deepened. I had said in my talk 
 with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora's 
 by the lake and had perplexed her by so say- 
 ing that it would from that moment distress 
 me much more to lose my power than to keep it. 
 I had then expressed what was vividly in my 
 mind : the truth that, whether the children really 
 saw or not since, that is, it was 'not yet defi- 
 nitely proved I greatly preferred, as a safe- 
 guard, the fulness of my own exposure. I was 
 ready to know the very worst that was to be 
 known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse 
 of was that my eyes might be sealed just while 
 theirs were most opened. Well, my eyes were 
 sealed, it appeared, at present a consummation 
 for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank 
 God. There was, alas, a difficulty about that : 
 I would have thanked him with all my soul had 
 I not had in a proportionate measure this con- 
 viction of the secret of my pupils. 
 
 How can I retrace today the strange steps of 
 my obsession? There were times of our being 
 together when I would have been ready to swear
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 125 
 
 that, literally, in ray presence, but with my direct 
 sense of it closed, they had visitors who were 
 known and were welcome. Then it was that, 
 had I not been deterred by the very chance that 
 such an injury might prove greater than the 
 injury to be averted, my exultation would have 
 broken out. "They're here, they're here, you 
 little wretches," I would have cried, "and you 
 can't deny it now ! " The little wretches denied 
 it with all the added volume of their sociability 
 and their tenderness, in just the crystal depths 
 of which like the flash of a fish in a stream 
 the mockery of their advantage peeped up. The 
 shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper 
 than I knew on the night when, looking out to 
 see either Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, 
 I had^ beheld the boy over whose rest I watched 
 and who had immediately brought in with him 
 had straightway, there, turned it on me the 
 lovely upward look with which, from the battle- 
 ments above me, the hideous apparition of Quint 
 had played. If it was a question of a scare, my 
 discovery on this occasion had scared me more 
 than any other, and it was in the condition of 
 nerves produced by it that I made my actual 
 inductions. They harassed me so that some- 
 times, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly
 
 126 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 to rehearse it was at once a fantastic relief 
 and a renewed despair the manner in which I 
 might come to the point. I approached it from 
 one side and the other while, in my room, I flung 
 myself about, but I always broke down in the 
 monstrous utterance of names. As they died 
 away on my lips, I said to myself that I should 
 indeed help them to represent something infa- 
 mous if, by pronouncing them, I should violate 
 as rare a little case of instinctive delicacy as any 
 schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When 
 I said to myself : " They have the manners to be 
 silent, and you, trusted as you are, the baseness 
 to speak ! " I felt myself crimson and I covered 
 my face with my hands. After these secret 
 scenes I chattered more than ever, going on 
 volubly enough till one of our prodigious, pal- 
 pable hushes occurred I can call them nothing 
 else the strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try 
 for terms !) into a stillness, a pause of all life, 
 that had nothing to do with the more or less 
 noise that at the moment we might be engaged 
 in making and that I could hear through any 
 deepened exhilaration or quickened recitation 
 or louder strum of the piano. Then it was that 
 the others, the outsiders, were there. Though 
 they were not angels, they "passed," as the
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 127 
 
 French say, causing me, while they stayed, to 
 tremble with the fear of their addressing to 
 their younger victims some yet more infernal 
 message or more vivid image than they had 
 thought good enough for myself. 
 
 What it was most impossible to get rid of was 
 the cruel idea that, whatever I had seen, Miles 
 and Flora saw more things terrible and un- 
 guessable and that sprang from dreadful passages 
 of intercourse in the past. Such things naturally 
 left on the surface, for the time, a chill which 
 we vociferously denied that we felt ; and we 
 had, all three, with repetition, got into such 
 splendid training that we went, each time, almost 
 automatically, to mark the close of the incident, 
 through the very same movements. It was strik- 
 ing of the children, at all events, to kiss me 
 inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and 
 never to fail one or the other of the precious 
 question that had helped us through many a 
 peril. " When do you think he will come ? 
 Don't you think we ought to write ? " there 
 was nothing like that inquiry, we found by 
 experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. 
 " He " of course was their uncle in Harley Street ; 
 and we lived in much profusion of theory that 
 he might at any moment arrive to mingle in
 
 128 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 our circle. It was impossible to have given 
 less encouragement than he had done to such 
 a doctrine, but if we had not had the doctrine 
 to fall back upon we should have deprived each 
 other of some of our finest exhibitions. He 
 never wrote to them that may have been 
 selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his 
 trust of me ; for the way in which a man pays 
 his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but 
 by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred 
 laws of his comfort ; and I held that I carried 
 out the spirit of the pledge given not to appeal 
 to him when I let my charges understand that 
 their own letters were but charming literary 
 exercises. They were too beautiful to be posted ; 
 I kept them myself; I have them all to this 
 hour. This was a rule indeed which only added 
 to the satiric effect of my being plied with the 
 supposition that he might at any moment be 
 among us. It was exactly as if my charges 
 knew how almost more awkward than anything 
 else that might be for me. There appears to 
 me, moreover, as I look back, no note in all 
 this more extraordinary than the mere fact that, 
 in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I 
 never lost patience with them. Adorable they 
 must in truth have been, I now reflect, that
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 129 
 
 I didn't in these days hate them ! Would ex- 
 asperation, however, if relief had longer been 
 postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little 
 matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though 
 it was only the relief that a snap brings to a 
 strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day 
 of suffocation. It was at least change, and it 
 came with a rush. 
 
 K
 
 XIV 
 
 WALKING to church a certain Sunday morning, 
 I had little Miles at my side and his sister, in 
 advance of us and at Mrs. Grose's, well in sight. 
 It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for 
 some time ; the night had brought a touch of 
 frost, and the autumn air, bright and sharp, made 
 the church-bells almost gay. It was an odd 
 accident of thought that I should have happened 
 at such a moment to be particularly and very 
 gratefully struck with the obedience of my little 
 charges. Why did they never resent my inexora- 
 ble, my perpetual society? Something or other 
 had brought nearer home to me that I had all 
 but pinned the boy to my shawl and that, in the 
 way our companions were marshalled before me, 
 I might have appeared to provide against some 
 danger of rebellion. I was like a gaoler with an 
 eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all 
 this belonged I mean their magnificent little 
 surrender just to the special array of the facts 
 130
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 131 
 
 that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday 
 by his uncle's tailor, who had had a free hand and 
 a notion of pretty waistcoats and of his grand 
 little air, Miles's whole title to independence, the 
 rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped 
 upon him that if he had suddenly struck for 
 freedom I should have had nothing to say. I 
 was by the strangest of chances wondering how 
 I should meet him when the revolution unmis- 
 takeably occurred. I call it a revolution because I 
 now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain 
 rose on the last act of my dreadful drama and the 
 catastrophe was precipitated. "Look here, my 
 dear, you know," he charmingly said, "when in 
 the world, please, am I going back to school?" 
 
 Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless 
 enough, particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, 
 casual pipe with which, at all interlocutors, but 
 above all at his eternal governess, he threw off 
 intonations as if he were tossing roses. There 
 was something in them that always made one 
 " catch," and I caught, at any rate, now so 
 effectually that I stopped as short as if one of 
 the trees of the park had fallen across the road. 
 There was something new, on the spot, between 
 us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognised 
 it, though, to enable me to do so, he had no need
 
 132 THE TUKN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 to look a whit less candid and charming than 
 usual. I could feel in him how he already, from 
 my at first finding nothing to reply, perceived the 
 advantage he had gained. I was so slow to find 
 anything that he had plenty of time, after a 
 minute, to continue with his suggestive but in- 
 conclusive smile : " You know, my dear, that for 
 
 a fellow to be with a lady always ! " His 
 
 "my dear" was constantly on his lips for me, 
 and nothing could have expressed more the exact 
 shade of the sentiment with which I desired to 
 inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It 
 was so respectfully easy. 
 
 But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick 
 my own phrases! I remember that, to gain time, 
 I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in the beau- 
 tiful face with which he watched me how ugly 
 and queer I looked. "And always with the 
 same lady ? " I returned. 
 
 He neither blenched nor winked. The whole 
 thing was virtually out between us. "Ah, of 
 course, she's a jolly, ' perfect ' lady ; but, after 
 all, I'm a fellow, don't you see? that's well, 
 getting on." 
 
 I lingered there with him an instant ever so 
 kindly. "Yes, you're getting on." Oh, but I 
 felt helpless !
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 133 
 
 I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little 
 idea of how he seemed to know that and to play 
 with it. " And you can't say I've not been aw- 
 fully good, can you?" 
 
 I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I 
 felt how much better it would have been to walk 
 on, I was not yet quite able. " No, I can't say 
 that, Miles." 
 
 " Except just that one night, you know ! " 
 
 " That one night ? " I couldn't look as straight 
 as he. 
 
 " Why, when I went down went out of the 
 house." 
 
 "Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for." 
 
 "You forget?" he spoke with the sweet ex- 
 travagance of childish reproach. " Why, it was 
 to show you I could ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, you could." 
 
 "And I can again." 
 
 I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed 
 in keeping my wits about me. " Certainly. But 
 you won't." 
 
 "No, not that again. It was nothing." 
 
 " It was nothing," I said. " But we must 
 go on." 
 
 He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand 
 into my arm. " Then when am I going back ? "
 
 134 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible 
 air. " Were you very happy at school ? " 
 
 He just considered. "Oh, I'm happy enough 
 anywhere ! " 
 
 " Well, then," I quavered, " if you're just as 
 happy here ! " 
 
 " Ah, but that isn't everything ! Of course 
 you know a lot " 
 
 "But you hint that you know almost as 
 much?" I risked as he paused. 
 
 " Not half I want to ! " Miles honestly pro- 
 fessed. "But it isn't so much that." 
 
 "What is it, then?" 
 
 "Well I want to see more life." 
 
 ".I see ; I see." We had arrived within sight 
 of the church and of various persons, including 
 several of the household of Bly, on their way to 
 it and clustered about the door to see us go in. 
 I quickened our step; I wanted to get there 
 before the question between us opened up much 
 further; I reflected hungrily that, for more 
 than an hour, he would have to be silent; and 
 I thought with envy of the comparative dusk of 
 the pew and of the almost spiritual help of the 
 hassock on which I might bend my knees. I 
 seemed literally to be running a race with some 
 confusion to which he was about to reduce me,
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 135 
 
 but I felt that lie had got in first when, before we 
 had even entered the churchyard, he threw out 
 
 " I want my own sort ! " 
 
 It literally made me bound forward. " There 
 are not many of your own sort, Miles ! " I 
 laughed. " Unless perhaps dear little Flora ! " 
 
 " You really compare me to a baby girl ? " 
 
 This found me singularly weak. " Don't you, 
 then, love our sweet Flora ? " 
 
 " If I didn't and you too ; if I didn't ! " 
 
 he repeated as if retreating for a jump, yet leav- 
 ing his thought so unfinished that, after we had 
 come into the gate, another stop, which he im- 
 posed on me by the pressure of his arm, had 
 become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had 
 passed into the church, the other worshippers 
 had followed, and we were, for the minute, alone 
 among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on 
 the path from the gate, by a low, oblong, table- 
 like tomb. 
 
 " Yes, if you didn't ? " 
 
 He looked, while I waited, about at the graves. 
 " Well, you know what ! " But he didn't move, 
 and he presently produced something that made 
 me drop straight down on the stone slab, as if 
 suddenly to rest. " Does my uncle think what 
 you think ? "
 
 136 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 I markedly rested. " How do you know what 
 I think?" 
 
 " Ah, well, of course I don't ; for it strikes me 
 you never tell me. But I mean does he know? " 
 
 " Know what, Miles ?" 
 
 "Why, the way I'm going on." 
 
 I perceived quickly enough that I could make, 
 to this inquiry, no answer that would not involve 
 something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it 
 appeared to me that we were all, at Ely, suf- 
 ficiently sacrificed to make that venial. " I don't 
 think your uncle much cares." 
 
 Miles, on this, stood looking at me. "Then 
 don't you think he can be made to?" 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "Why, by his coming down." 
 
 " But who'll get him to come down ? " 
 
 " I will ! " the boy said with extraordinary 
 brightness and emphasis. He gave me another 
 look charged with that expression and then 
 marched off alone into church.
 
 XV 
 
 THE business was practically settled from the 
 moment I never followed him. It was a pitiful 
 surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this 
 had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat 
 there on my tomb and read into what my little 
 friend had said to me the fulness of its meaning ; 
 by the time I had grasped the whole of which I 
 had also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I 
 was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of 
 the congregation such an example of delay. What 
 I said to myself above all was that Miles had got 
 something out of me and that the proof of it, for 
 him, would be just this awkward collapse. He 
 had got out of me that there was something I was 
 much afraid of and that he should probably be 
 able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own 
 purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having 
 to deal with the intolerable question of the 
 grounds of his dismissal from school, for that was 
 really but the question of the horrors gathered 
 137
 
 138 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat 
 with me of these things was a solution that, 
 strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to 
 bring on ; but I could so little face the ugliness 
 and the pain of it that I simply procrastinated 
 and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my 
 deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, 
 was in a position to say to me : " Either you clear 
 up with my guardian the mystery of this inter- 
 ruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me 
 to lead with you a life that's so unnatural for a 
 boy." What was so unnatural for the particular 
 boy I was concerned with was this sudden revela- 
 tion of a consciousness and a plan. 
 
 That was what really overcame me, what pre- 
 vented my going in. I walked round the church, 
 hesitating, hovering ; I reflected that I had al- 
 ready, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. 
 Therefore I could patch up nothing, and it was 
 too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into 
 the pew : he would be so much more sure than 
 ever to pass his arm into mine and make me sit 
 there for an hour in close, silent contact with his 
 commentary on our talk. For the first minute 
 since his arrival I wanted to get away from him. 
 As I paused beneath the high east window and 
 listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 139 
 
 with an impulse that might master me, I felt, 
 completely should I give it the least encourage- 
 ment. I might easily put an end to my predica- 
 ment by getting away altogether. Here was my 
 chance ; there was no one to stop me ; I could 
 give the whole thing up turn my back and 
 retreat. It was only a question of hurrying 
 again, for a few preparations, to the house which 
 the attendance at church of so many of the ser- 
 vants would practically have left unoccupied. 
 No one, in short, could blame me if I should just 
 drive desperately off. What was it to get away 
 if I got away only till dinner ? That would be in 
 a couple of hours, at the end of which I had the 
 acute prevision my little pupils would play at 
 innocent wonder about my non-appearance in 
 their train. 
 
 " What did you do, you naughty, bad thing ? 
 Why in the world, to worry us so and take our 
 thoughts off too, don't you know ? did you 
 desert us at the very door ? " I couldn't meet 
 such questions nor, as they asked them, their 
 false little lovely eyes ; yet it was all so exactly 
 what I should have to meet that, as the prospect 
 grew sharp to me, I at last let myself go. 
 
 I got, so far as the immediate moment was 
 concerned, away ; I came straight out of the
 
 140 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps 
 through the park. It seemed to me that by the 
 time I reached the house I had made up my mind 
 I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the 
 approaches and of the interior, in which I met no 
 one, fairly excited me with a sense of opportunity. 
 Were I to get off quickly, this way, I should get 
 off without a scene, without a word. My quick- 
 ness would have to be remarkable, however, and 
 the question of a conveyance was the great one to 
 settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties 
 and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the 
 foot of the staircase suddenly collapsing there 
 on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, 
 recalling that it was exactly where more than a 
 month before, in the darkness of night and just 
 so bowed with evil things, I had seen the spectre 
 of the most horrible of women. At this I was 
 able to straighten myself ; I went the rest of the 
 way up ; I made, in my bewilderment, for the 
 schoolroom, where there were objects belonging 
 to me that I should have to take. But I opened 
 the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes un- 
 sealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled 
 straight back upon my resistance. 
 
 Seated at my own table in clear noonday light 
 I saw a person whom, without my previous expe-
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 141 
 
 rience, I should have taken at the first blush 
 for some housemaid who might have stayed at 
 home to look after the place and who, availing 
 herself of rare relief from observation and of the 
 schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had 
 applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter 
 to her sweetheart. There was an effort in the 
 way that, while her arms rested on the table, her 
 hands with evident weariness supported her 
 head ; but at the moment I took this in I had 
 already become aware that, in spite of my en- 
 trance, her attitude strangely persisted. Then it 
 was with the very act of its announcing itself 
 that her identity flared up in a change of 
 posture. She rose, not as if she had heard me, 
 but with an indescribable grand melancholy of 
 indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen 
 feet of me, stood there as my vile predecessor. 
 Dishonoured and tragic, she was all before me ; 
 but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, 
 the awful image passed away. Dark as midnight 
 in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her 
 unutterable woe, she had looked at me long 
 enough to appear to say that her right to sit at 
 my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. 
 While these instants lasted indeed I had the 
 extraordinary chill of a feeling that it was I who
 
 142 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 was the intruder. It was as a wild protest 
 against it that, actually addressing her "You 
 terrible, miserable woman ! " I heard myself 
 break into a sound that, by the open door, rang 
 through the long passage and the empty house. 
 She looked at me as if she heard me, but I had 
 recovered myself and cleared the air. There was 
 nothing in the room the next minute but the 
 sunshine and a sense that I must stay.
 
 XVI 
 
 I HAD so perfectly expected that the return 
 of my pupils would be marked by a demonstra- 
 tion that I was freshly upset at having to take 
 into account that they were dumb about my 
 absence. Instead of gaily denouncing and caress- 
 ing me, they made no allusion to my having 
 failed them, and I was left, for the time, on 
 perceiving that she too said nothing, to study 
 Mrs. Grose's odd face. I did this to such pur- 
 pose that I made sure they had in some way 
 bribed her to silence ; a silence that, however, 
 I would engage to break down on the first 
 private opportunity. This opportunity came 
 before tea : I secured five minutes with her in 
 the housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, 
 amid a smell of lately-baked bread, but with 
 the place all swept and garnished, I found her 
 sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So 
 I see her still, so I see her best : facing the 
 flame from her straight chair in the dusky, 
 143
 
 144 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 shining room, a large clean image of the "put 
 away" of drawers closed and locked and rest 
 without a remedy. 
 
 " Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing ; and 
 to please them so long as they were there 
 of course I promised. But what had happened 
 to you?" 
 
 " I only went with you for the walk," I said. 
 "I had then to come back to meet a friend." 
 
 She showed her surprise. " A friend you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have a couple ! " I laughed. " But 
 did the children give you a reason ? " 
 
 " For not alluding to your leaving us ? Yes ; 
 they said you would like it better. Do you 
 like it better?" 
 
 My face had made her rueful. "No, I like 
 it worse ! " But after an instant I added : " Did 
 they say why I should like it better?" 
 
 " No ; Master Miles only said, ' We must do 
 nothing but what she likes ! " 
 
 " I wish indeed he would ! And what did 
 Flora say?" 
 
 " Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ' Oh, 
 of course, of course!' and I said the same." 
 
 I thought a moment. " You were too sweet 
 too I can hear you all. But none the less, 
 between Miles and me, it's now all out."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 145 
 
 " All out ? " My companion stared. " But 
 what, Miss?" 
 
 "Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made 
 up my mind. I came home, my dear," I went 
 on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel." 
 
 I had by this time formed the habit of having 
 Mrs. Grose literally well in hand in advance of 
 my sounding that note ; so that even now, as 
 she bravely blinked under the signal of my 
 word, I could keep her comparatively firm. "A 
 talk ! Do you mean she spoke ? " 
 
 " It came to that. I found her, on my return, 
 in the schoolroom." 
 
 "And what did she say?" I can hear the 
 good woman still, and the candour of her 
 stupefaction. 
 
 "That she suffers the torments !" 
 
 It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she 
 filled out my picture, gape. "Do you mean," 
 she faltered, " of the lost?" 
 
 "Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's 
 
 why, to share them " I faltered myself 
 
 with the horror of it. 
 
 But my companion, with less imagination, kept 
 me up. "To share them ?" 
 
 "She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I 
 gave it to her, fairly have fallen away from me
 
 146 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 had I not been prepared. I still held her there, 
 to show I was. "As I've told you, however, it 
 doesn't matter." 
 
 "Because you've made up your mind? But 
 to what?" 
 
 "To everything." 
 
 " And what do you call ' everything ' ? " 
 
 "Why, sending for their uncle." 
 
 "Oh, Miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. 
 
 "Ah, but I will, I will! I see it's the only 
 way. What's 'out,' as I told you, with Miles 
 is that if he thinks I'm afraid to and has 
 ideas of what he gains by that he shall see 
 he's mistaken. Yes, yes ; his uncle shall have 
 it here from me on the spot (and before the 
 boy himself if necessary) that if I'm to be 
 reproached with having done nothing again 
 about more school " 
 
 " Yes, Miss " my companion pressed me. 
 
 " Well, there's that awful reason." 
 
 There were now clearly so many of these for 
 my poor colleague that she was excusable for 
 being vague. " But a which ? " 
 
 "Why, the letter from his old place." 
 
 " You'll show it to the master ? " 
 
 "I ought to have done so on the instant." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Mrs. Grose with decision.
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 147 
 
 " I'll put it before him," I went on inexo- 
 rably, "that I can't undertake to work the 
 question on behalf of a child who has been 
 expelled 
 
 " For we've never in the least known what ! " 
 Mrs. Grose declared. 
 
 "For wickedness. For what else when 
 he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is 
 he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is 
 he ill-natured? He's exquisite so it can be 
 only that; and that would open up the whole 
 thing. After all," I said, " it's their uncle's 
 fault. If he left here such people ! " 
 
 " He didn't really in the least know them. 
 The fault's mine." She had turned quite 
 pale. 
 
 "Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. 
 
 " The children shan't ! " she emphatically re- 
 turned. 
 
 I was silent awhile ; we looked at each other. 
 " Then what am I to tell him ? " 
 
 "You needn't tell him anything. Til tell 
 him." 
 
 I measured this. "Do you mean you'll 
 
 write ? " Remembering she couldn't, I 
 
 caught myself up. " How do you communi- 
 cate ? "
 
 148 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "I tell the bailiff. He writes." 
 
 "And should you like him to write our 
 story ? " 
 
 My question had a sarcastic force that I had 
 not fully intended, and it made her, after a 
 moment, inconsequently break down. The tears 
 were again in her eyes. " Ah, Miss, you 
 write ! " 
 
 "Well tonight," I at last answered; and 
 on this we separated.
 
 XVII 
 
 I WENT so far, in the evening, as to make a 
 beginning. The weather had changed back, a 
 great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, 
 in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I 
 sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper 
 and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter 
 of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a can- 
 dle ; I crossed the passage and listened a minute 
 at Miles's door. What, under my endless ob- 
 session, I had been impelled to listen for was 
 some betrayal of his not being at rest, and I 
 presently caught one, but not in the form I had 
 expected. His voice tinkled out. " I say, you 
 there come in." It was a gaiety in the gloom ! 
 
 I went in with my light and found him, in bed, 
 very wide awake, but very much at his ease. 
 " Well, what are you up to ? " he asked with a 
 grace of sociability in which it occurred to me 
 that Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might 
 have looked in vain for proof that anything was 
 " out." 
 
 149
 
 150 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 I stood over him with my candle. " How did 
 you know I was there ? " 
 
 " Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy 
 you made no noise ? You're like a troop of cav- 
 alry ! " he beautifully laughed. 
 
 " Then you weren't asleep ? " 
 
 " Not much ! I lie awake and think." 
 
 I had put my candle, designedly, a short way 
 off, and then, as he held out his friendly old hand 
 to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. 
 " What is it," I asked, "that you think of ? " 
 
 " What in the world, my dear, but you? " 
 
 " Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation 
 doesn't insist on that ! I had so far rather you 
 slept." 
 
 " Well, I think also, you know, of this queer 
 business of ours." 
 
 I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. 
 " Of what queer business, Miles ? " 
 
 " Why, the way you bring me up. And all 
 the rest ! " 
 
 I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from 
 my glimmering taper there was light enough to 
 show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. 
 " What do you mean by all the rest ? " 
 
 " Oh, you know, you know ! " 
 
 I could say nothing for a minute, though I
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 151 
 
 felt, as I held his hand and our eyes continued 
 to meet, that my silence had all the air of ad- 
 mitting his charge and that nothing in the whole 
 world of reality was perhaps at that moment so 
 fabulous as our actual relation. " Certainly you 
 shall go back to school," I said, "if it be that 
 that troubles you. But not to the old place 
 we must find another, a better. How could 
 I know it did trouble you, this question, when 
 you never told me so, never spoke of it at all ? " 
 His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth 
 whiteness, made him for the minute as appealing 
 as some wistful patient in a children's hospital; 
 and I would have given, as the resemblance came 
 to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the 
 nurse or the sister of charity who might have 
 helped to cure him. Well, even as it was, I per- 
 haps might help ! " Do you know you've never 
 said a word to me about your school I mean 
 the old one ; never mentioned it in any way ? " 
 
 He seemed to wonder ; he smiled with the 
 same loveliness. But he clearly gained time ; he 
 waited, he called for guidance. " Haven't I ? " 
 It wasn't for me to help him it was for the 
 thing I had met ! 
 
 Something in his tone and the expression of his 
 face, as I got this from him, set my heart aching
 
 152 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 with such a pang as it had never yet known ; so 
 unutterably touching was it to see his little 
 brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to 
 play, under the spell laid on him, a part of inno- 
 cence and consistency. "No, never from the 
 hour you came back. You've never mentioned 
 to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, 
 nor the least little thing that ever happened to 
 you at school. Never, little Miles no, never 
 have you given me an inkling of anything that 
 may have happened there. Therefore you can 
 fancy how much I'm in the dark. Until you 
 came out, that way, this morning, you had, since 
 the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a ref- 
 erence to anything in your previous life. You 
 seemed so perfectly to accept the present." It 
 was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of 
 his secret precocity (or whatever I might call the 
 poison of an influence that I dared but half to 
 phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of 
 his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an 
 older person imposed him almost as an intellect- 
 ual equal. " I thought you wanted to go on as 
 you are." 
 
 It struck me that at this he just faintly coloured. 
 He gave, at any rate, like a convalescent slightly 
 fatigued, a languid shake of his head. " I don't 
 I don't. I want to get away."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 153 
 
 " You're tired of Ely ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, I like Ely." 
 
 "Well, then ?" 
 
 " Oh, you know what a boy wants ! " 
 
 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 colour. " My dear, I don't want to 
 get off I " 
 
 " You can't, even if you do. You can't, you 
 can't ! " he lay beautifully staring. " My un- 
 cle 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 ! "
 
 154 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 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 posi- 
 tive 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 dis- 
 honour. 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- 
 humour. "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."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 15& 
 
 Oh, I was sorry for him ! " That you just 
 want me not to worry you ? " 
 
 He looked round at me now, as if in recog- 
 nition 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 con- 
 sciousness it made me drop on my knees be- 
 side the bed and seize once more the chance 
 of possessing him. "Dear little Miles, dear lit- 
 tle Miles, if you knew how I want to help you !
 
 156 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 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 un- 
 stirred and the window tight. "Why, the can- 
 dle'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 writ- 
 ten, 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 ex- 
 emplary 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, geo- 
 graphical and historical jokes. It was conspicu- 
 ous 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 
 167
 
 158 THE TUKN OP THE SCREW 
 
 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 jus- 
 tice 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 mag- 
 nanimity, 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
 
 THE TUEN OF THE SCKEW 159 
 
 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 accom- 
 pany 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 school- 
 room 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 1 
 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
 
 160 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 into several others. As she was nowhere about 
 she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in 
 the comfort of that theory, I accordingly pro- 
 ceeded 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 be- 
 tween 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."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 161 
 
 Mrs. Grose stared. "Without a hat?" 
 
 I naturally also looked volumes. " Isn't that 
 woman always without one ? " 
 
 "She's with Tier? " 
 
 "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 press- 
 ure. She communed, on the contrary, on the 
 spot, with her uneasiness. "And where's 
 Master Miles?" 
 
 " Oh, Tie's with Quint. They're in the school- 
 room." 
 
 " 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 re- 
 joined. "He has provided for himself as well. 
 But come ! " 
 
 She had helplessly gloomed at the upper 
 regions. " You leave him ? "
 
 162 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 "So long with Quint? Yes I don't mind 
 that now." 
 
 She always ended, at these moments, by get- 
 ting 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 let- 
 ter, 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 grey. I came 
 down to the drive while she stood in the door- 
 way. " 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 Ely, and I dare say rightly called, though I 
 reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet of 
 water less remarkable than it appeared to my 
 untravelled eyes. My acquaintance with sheets 
 of water was small, and the pool of Ely, 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 ad- 
 venture, 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 
 163
 
 164 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 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 what I judge most 
 likely is that she's on the spot from which, the 
 other day, we saw together what I told you." 
 
 "When she pretended not to see ?" 
 
 "With that astounding self-possession! I've 
 always been sure she wanted to go back alone. 
 And now her brother has managed it for her." 
 
 Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. 
 " You suppose they really talk of them ? " 
 
 I could meet this with a confidence ! " They 
 say things that, if we heard them, would simply 
 appal us." 
 
 "And if she it there ?" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Then Miss Jessel is?" 
 
 "Beyond a doubt. You shall see." 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! " my friend cried, planted 
 so firm that, taking it in, I went straight on 
 without her. By the time I reached the pool, 
 however, she was close behind me, and I knew 
 that, whatever, to her apprehension, might be- 
 fall me, the exposure of my society struck her
 
 THE TUEN OF THE SCKEW 165 
 
 as her least danger. She exhaled a moan of 
 relief as we at last came in sight of the greater 
 part of the water without a sight of the child. 
 There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side 
 of the bank where my observation of her had 
 been most startling, and none on the opposite 
 edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty 
 yards, a thick copse came down to the water. 
 The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant 
 compared to its length that, with its ends out 
 of view, it might have been taken for a scant 
 river. We looked at the empty expanse, and 
 then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes. 
 I knew what she meant and I replied with a 
 negative headshake. 
 
 "No, no ; wait! She has taken the boat." 
 
 My companion stared at the vacant rnooring- 
 place and then again across the lake. " Then 
 where is it?" 
 
 " Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. 
 She has used it to go over, and then has managed 
 to hide it." 
 
 "All alone that child?" 
 
 " She's not alone, and at such times she's not a 
 child: she's an old, old woman." I scanned all 
 the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, into 
 the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges
 
 166 THE TURF OF THE SCREW 
 
 of submission; then I pointed out that the boat 
 might perfectly be in a small refuge formed by one 
 of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, 
 for the hither side, by a projection of the bank 
 and by a clump of trees growing close to the 
 water. 
 
 "But if the boat's there, where on earth's she f " 
 my colleague anxiously asked. 
 
 " That's exactly what we must learn." And I 
 started to walk further. 
 
 " By going all the way round? " 
 
 " Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but 
 ten minutes, but it's far enough to have made the 
 child prefer not to walk. She went straight 
 over." 
 
 " Laws ! " cried my friend again ; the chain of 
 my logic was ever too much for her. It dragged 
 her at my heels even now, and when we had got 
 half-way round a devious, tiresome process, on 
 ground much broken and by a path choked with 
 overgrowth I paused to give her breath. I 
 sustained her with a grateful arm, assuring her 
 that she might hugely help me ; and this started 
 us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes 
 more we reached a point from which we found 
 the boat to be where I had supposed it. It had 
 been intentionally left as much as possible out of
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 167 
 
 sight and was tied to one of the stakes of a fence 
 that came, just there, down to the brink and that 
 had been an assistance to disembarking. I rec- 
 ognised, as I looked at the pair of short, thick 
 oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious char- 
 acter of the feat for a little girl ; but I had lived, 
 by this time, too long among wonders and had 
 panted to too many livelier measures. There was 
 a gate in the fence, through which we passed, and 
 that brought us, after a trifling interval, more 
 into the open. Then, " There she is I " we both 
 exclaimed at once. 
 
 Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the 
 grass and smiled as if her performance was now 
 complete. The next thing she did, however, was 
 to stoop straight down and pluck quite as if it 
 were all she was there for a big, ugly spray of 
 withered fern. I instantly became sure she had 
 just come out of the copse. She waited for us, 
 not herself taking a step, and I was conscious 
 of the rare solemnity with which we presently 
 approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we 
 met ; but it was all done in a silence by this time 
 flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to 
 break the spell : she threw herself on her knees 
 and, drawing the child to her breast, clasped in 
 a long embrace the little tender, yielding body.
 
 168 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only 
 watch it which I did the more intently when I 
 saw Flora's face peep at me over our companion's 
 shoulder. It was serious now the flicker had 
 left it ; but it strengthened the pang with which 
 I at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity 
 of her relation. Still, all this while, nothing more 
 passed between us save that Flora had let her 
 foolish fern again drop to the ground. What 
 she and I had virtually said to each other was 
 that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. 
 Grose finally got up she kept the child's hand, so 
 that the two were still before me ; and the 
 singular reticence of our communion was even 
 more marked in the frank look she launched me. 
 " I'll be hanged," it said, " if I'll speak ! " 
 
 It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid 
 wonder, was the first. She was struck with our 
 bareheaded aspect. "Why, where are your 
 things? " 
 
 " Where yours are, my dear ! " I promptly 
 returned. 
 
 She had already got back her gaiety, and 
 appeared to take this as an answer quite suffi- 
 cient. " And where's Miles ? " she went on. 
 
 There was something in the small valour of 
 it that quite finished me : these three words
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 169 
 
 from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a 
 drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, 
 for weeks and weeks, had held high and full 
 to the brim and that now, even before speaking, 
 I felt overflow in a deluge. "I'll tell you if 
 
 you'll tell me " I heard myself say, then 
 
 heard the tremor in which it broke. 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 Mrs. Grose's suspense blazed at me, but it 
 was too late now, and I brought the thing out 
 handsomely. "Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?"
 
 XX 
 
 JUST as in the churchyard with Miles, the 
 whole thing was upon us. Much as I had 
 made of the fact that this name had never once, 
 between us, been sounded, the quick, smitten 
 glare with which the child's face now received 
 it fairly likened my breach of the silence to 
 the smash of a pane of glass. It added to the 
 interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. 
 Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my 
 violence the shriek of a creature scared, or 
 rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few 
 seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. 
 I seized my colleague's arm. " She's there, she's 
 there ! " 
 
 Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite 
 bank exactly as she had stood the other time, 
 and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling 
 now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having 
 brought on a proof. She was there, and I was 
 justified ; she was there, and I was neither cruel 
 170
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 171 
 
 nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. 
 Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and 
 no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps 
 so extraordinary as that in which I consciously 
 threw out to her with the sense that, pale 
 and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch 
 and understand it an inarticulate message of 
 gratitude. She rose erect on the spot my friend 
 and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in 
 all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her 
 evil that fell short. This first vividness of vision 
 and emotion were things of a few seconds, during 
 which Mrs. Grose's dazed blink across to where 
 I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that 
 she too at last saw, just as it carried my own 
 eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation 
 then of the manner in which Flora was affected 
 startled me, in truth, far more than it would have 
 done to find her also merely agitated, for direct 
 dismay was of course not what I had expected. 
 Prepared and on her guard as our pursuit had 
 actually made her, she would repress every 
 betrayal ; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, 
 by my first glimpse of the particular one for 
 which I had not allowed. To see her, without 
 a convulsion of her small pink face, not even 
 feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy
 
 172 THE TURN OF THE SCKEW 
 
 I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at 
 me an expression of hard, still gravity, an ex- 
 pression absolutely new and unprecedented and 
 that appeared to read and accuse and judge me 
 this was a stroke that somehow converted the 
 little girl herself into the very presence that 
 could make me quail. I quailed even though 
 my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never 
 greater than at that instant, and in the immediate 
 need to defend myself I called it passionately to 
 witness. " She's there, you little unhappy thing 
 there, there, there, and you see her as well 
 as you see me ! " I had said shortly before to 
 Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a 
 child, but an old, old woman, and that description 
 of her could not have been more strikingly con- 
 firmed than in the way in which, for all answer 
 to this, she simply showed me, without a con- 
 cession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance 
 of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite 
 fixed, reprobation. I was by this time if I 
 can put the whole thing at all together more 
 appalled at what I may properly call her man- 
 ner than at anything else, though it was simul- 
 taneously with this that I became aware of 
 having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, 
 to reckon with. My elder companion, the next
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 173 
 
 moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but 
 her own flushed face and her loud, shocked 
 protest, a burst of high disapproval. " What a 
 dreadful turn, to be sure, Miss ! Where on earth 
 do you see anything ? " 
 
 I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for 
 even while she spoke the hideous plain presence 
 stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already 
 lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, 
 seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it 
 and presenting her to it, to insist with my point- 
 ing hand. "You don't see her exactly as we 
 see ? you mean to say you don't now now f 
 She's as big as a blazing fire ! Only look, dear- 
 est woman, look !" She looked, even as I 
 
 did, and gave me, with her deep groan of nega- 
 tion, repulsion, compassion the mixture with 
 her pity of her relief at her exemption a sense, 
 touching to me even then, that she would have 
 backed me up if she could. I might well have 
 needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof 
 that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my 
 own situation horribly crumble, I felt I saw 
 my livid predecessor press, from her position, 
 on my defeat, and I was conscious, more than 
 all, of what I should have from this instant to 
 deal with in the astounding little attitude of
 
 174 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 
 
 Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immedi- 
 ately and violently entered, breaking, even while 
 there pierced through my sense of ruin a pro- 
 digious private triumph, into breathless reas- 
 surance. 
 
 " She isn't there, little lady, and nobody's there 
 
 and you never see nothing, my sweet ! How 
 can poor Miss Jessel when poor Miss Jessel's 
 dead and buried ? We know, don't we, love ? " 
 and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. 
 " It's all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke 
 
 and we'll go home as fast as we can ! " 
 
 Our companion, on this, had responded with 
 a strange, quick primness of propriety, and they 
 were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, 
 as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora 
 continued to fix me with her small mask of rep- 
 robation, and even at that minute I prayed God 
 to forgive me for seeming to see that, as she 
 stood there holding tight to our friend's dress, 
 her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly 
 failed, had quite vanished. I've said it already 
 
 she was literally, she was hideously, hard ; she 
 had turned common and almost ugly. " I don't 
 know what you mean. I see nobody. I see 
 nothing. I never have. I think you're cruel. 
 I don't like you ! " Then, after this deliverance,
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 175 
 
 which might have been that of a vulgarly pert 
 little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose 
 more closely and buried in her skirts the dread- 
 ful little face. In this position she produced an 
 almost furious wail. "Take me away, take me 
 away oh, take me away from her!" 
 
 " From me ? " I panted. 
 
 " From you from you ! " she cried. 
 
 Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dis- 
 mayed, while I had nothing to do but commu- 
 nicate again with the figure that, on the opposite 
 bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if 
 catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as 
 vividly there for my disaster as it was not there 
 for my service. The wretched child had spoken 
 exactly as if she had got from some outside source 
 each of her stabbing little words, and I could 
 therefore, in the full despair of all I had to ac- 
 cept, but sadly shake my head at her. " If I had 
 ever doubted, all my doubt would at present have 
 gone. I've been living with the miserable truth, 
 and now it has only too much closed round me. 
 Of course I've lost you : I've interfered, and 
 you've seen under her dictation " with which 
 I faced, over the pool again, our infernal witness 
 "the easy and perfect way to meet it. I've 
 done my best, but I've lost you. Good-bye."
 
 176 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost 
 frantic " Go, go ! " before which, in infinite dis- 
 tress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and 
 clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that 
 something awful had occurred and some collapse 
 engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had 
 come, as fast as she could move. 
 
 Of what first happened when I was left alone 
 I had no subsequent memory. I only knew that 
 at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, 
 an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and 
 piercing my trouble, had made me understand 
 that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on 
 the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. 
 I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, 
 for when I raised my head the day was almost 
 done. I got up and looked a moment, through 
 the twilight, at the grey pool and its blank, 
 haunted edge, and then I took, back to the 
 house, my dreary and difficult course. When 
 I reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my 
 surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflec- 
 tion to make on Flora's extraordinary command 
 of the situation. She passed that night, by 
 the most tacit, and I should add, were not the 
 word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of 
 arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 177 
 
 of them on my return, but, on the other hand, 
 as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw a great 
 deal of Miles. I saw I can use no other phrase 
 
 so much of him that it was as if it were more 
 than it had ever been. No evening I had passed 
 at Ely had the portentous quality of this one ; 
 in spite of which and in spite also of the 
 deeper depths of consternation that had opened 
 beneath my feet there was literally, in the 
 ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. 
 On reaching the house I had never so much as 
 looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight 
 to my room to change what I was wearing and to 
 take in, at a glance, much material testimony to 
 Flora's rupture. Her little belongings had all 
 been removed. When later, by the schoolroom 
 fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I 
 indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in 
 no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom now 
 
 he might have it to the end ! Well, he did 
 have it ; and it consisted in part at least 
 of his coming in at about eight o'clock and 
 sitting down with me in silence. On the re- 
 moval of the tea-things I had blown out the 
 candles and drawn my chair closer : I was con- 
 scious of a mortal coldness and felt as if I 
 should never again be warm. So, when he ap- 
 
 v
 
 178 THE TUKN OP THE SCREW 
 
 peared, I was sitting in the glow with my 
 thoughts. He paused a moment by the door 
 as if to look at me ; then as if to share them 
 came to the other side of the hearth and 
 sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute 
 stillness ; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me.
 
 XXI 
 
 BEFORE a new day, in my room, had fully 
 broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. Grose, who had 
 come to my bedside with worse news. Flora 
 was so markedly feverish that an illness was 
 perhaps at hand ; she had passed a night of 
 extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by 
 fears that had for their subject not in the least 
 her former, but wholly her present, governess. It 
 was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss 
 Jessel on the scene that she protested it was 
 conspicuously and passionately against mine. I 
 was promptly on my feet of course, and with an 
 immense deal to ask ; the more that my friend 
 had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me 
 once more. This I felt as soon as I had put 
 to her the question of her sense of the child's 
 sincerity as against my own. " She persists in 
 denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, 
 anything? " 
 
 My visitor's trouble, truly, was great. "Ah, 
 179
 
 180 THE TtJKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 Miss, it isn't a matter on which I can push her ! 
 Yet it isn't either, I must say, as if I much 
 needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, 
 quite old." 
 
 "Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She re- 
 sents, for all the world like some high little 
 personage, the imputation on her truthfulness 
 and, as it were, her respectability. ' Miss Jessel 
 indeed she ! ' Ah, she's ' respectable,' the chit ! 
 The impression she gave me there yesterday was, 
 I assure you, the very strangest of all ; it was 
 quite beyond any of the others. I did put my 
 foot in it ! She'll never speak to me again." 
 
 Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held 
 Mrs. Grose briefly silent ; then she granted my 
 point with a frankness which, I made sure, had 
 more behind it. " I think indeed, Miss, she never 
 will. She do have a grand manner about it ! " 
 
 "And that manner" I summed it up "is 
 practically what's the matter with her now ! " 
 
 Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor's 
 face, and not a little else besides ! " She asks 
 me every three minutes if I think you're coming 
 in." 
 
 "I see I see." I too, on my side, had so 
 much more than worked it out. " Has she said 
 to you since yesterday except to repudiate her
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 181 
 
 familiarity with anything so dreadful a single 
 other word about Miss Jessel?" 
 
 "Not one, Miss. And of course you know," 
 my friend added, "I took it from her, by the 
 lake, that, just then and there at least, there was 
 nobody." 
 
 " Rather ! And, naturally, you take it from 
 her still." 
 
 " I don't contradict her. What else can I do ? " 
 
 " Nothing in the world ! You've the cleverest 
 little person to deal with. They've made them 
 their two friends, I mean still cleverer even 
 than nature did ; for it was wondrous material 
 to play on ! Flora has now her grievance, and 
 she'll work it to the end." 
 
 " Yes, Miss ; but to what end ? " 
 
 "Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. 
 She'll make me out to him the lowest creat- 
 
 ure 
 
 .T " 
 
 I winced at the fair show of the scene in 
 Mrs. Grose's face; she looked for a minute as 
 if she sharply saw them together. "And him 
 who thinks so well of you ! " 
 
 "He has an odd way it comes over me 
 now," I laughed, " of proving it! But that 
 doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is 
 to get rid of me."
 
 182 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 My companion bravely concurred. "Never 
 again to so much as look at you." 
 
 " So that what you've come to me now for," 
 I asked, " is to speed me on my way ? " Before 
 she had time to reply, however, I had her in 
 check. " I've a better idea the result of my 
 reflections. My going would seem the right 
 thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. 
 Yet that won't do. It's you who must go. 
 You must take Flora." 
 
 My visitor, at this, did speculate. "But 
 where in the world ?" 
 
 " Away from here. Away from them. Away, 
 even most of all, now, from me. Straight to 
 her uncle." 
 
 "Only to tell on you ?" 
 
 " No, not ' only ' ! To leave me, in addition, 
 with my remedy." 
 
 She was still vague. "And what is your 
 remedy ? n 
 
 "Your loyalty, to begin with. And then 
 Miles's." 
 
 She looked at me hard. "Do you think 
 he ?" 
 
 "Won't if he has the chance, turn on me? 
 Yes, I venture still to think it. At all events, 
 I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 183 
 
 as possible and leave me with him alone." I 
 was amazed, myself, at the spirit I had still in 
 reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more 
 disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of 
 this fine example of it, she hesitated. " There's 
 one thing, of course," I went on : " they mustn't, 
 before she goes, see each other for three seconds. " 
 Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora's 
 presumable sequestration from the instant of 
 her return from the pool, it might already be 
 too late. "Do you mean," I anxiously asked, 
 "that they have met?" 
 
 At this she quite flushed. "Ah, Miss, I'm 
 not such a fool as that ! If I've been obliged 
 to leave her three or four times, it has been 
 each time with one of the maids, and at pres- 
 ent, though she's alone, she's locked in safe. 
 And yet and yet ! " There were too many 
 things. 
 
 "And yet what?" 
 
 "Well, are you so sure of the little gentle- 
 man?" 
 
 "I'm not sure of anything but you. But I 
 have, since last evening, a new hope. I think 
 he wants to give me an opening. I do believe 
 that poor little exquisite wretch ! he wants 
 to speak. Last evening, in the firelight and
 
 184 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if 
 it were just coming." 
 
 Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, 
 at the grey, gathering day. " And did it come ? " 
 
 "No, though I waited and waited, I confess 
 it didn't, and it was without a breach of the 
 silence or so much as a faint allusion to his 
 sister's condition and absence that we at last 
 kissed for good-night. All the same," I con- 
 tinued, " I can't, if her uncle sees her, consent 
 to his seeing her brother without my having 
 given the boy and most of all because things 
 have got so bad a little more time." 
 
 My friend appeared on this ground more re- 
 luctant than I could quite understand. "What 
 do you mean by more time ? " 
 
 "Well, a day or two really to bring it out. 
 He'll then be on my side of which you see 
 the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only 
 fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped 
 me by doing, on your arrival in town, whatever 
 you may have found possible." So I put it 
 before her, but she continued for a little so 
 inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to 
 her aid. "Unless, indeed," I wound up, "you 
 really want not to go." 
 
 I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself ;
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 185 
 
 she put out her hand to me as a pledge. " I'll 
 go I'll go. I'll go this morning." 
 
 I wanted to be very just. " If you should 
 wish still to wait, I would engage she shouldn't 
 see me." 
 
 " No, no : it's the place itself. She must leave 
 it." She held me a moment with heavy eyes, 
 then brought out the rest. "Your idea's the 
 right one. I myself, Miss " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I can't stay." 
 
 The look she gave me with it made me jump 
 at possibilities. "You mean that, since yester- 
 day, you have seen ? " 
 
 She shook her head with dignity. "I've 
 heard ! " 
 
 "Heard?" 
 
 "From that child horrors ! There!" she 
 sighed with tragic relief. " On my honour, Miss, 
 
 she says things ! " But at this evocation 
 
 she broke down ; she dropped, with a sudden 
 sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do 
 before, gave way to all the grief of it. 
 
 It was quite in another manner that I, for 
 my part, let myself go. " Oh, thank God ! " 
 
 She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes 
 with a groan. " Thank God ' ? "
 
 186 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 " It so justifies me ! " 
 
 " It does that, Miss ! " 
 
 I couldn't have desired more emphasis, but 
 I just hesitated. "She's so horrible?" 
 
 I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put 
 it. "Really shocking." 
 
 "And about me?" 
 
 "About you, Miss since you must have it. 
 It's beyond everything, for a young lady ; and 
 I can't think wherever she must have picked 
 up--" 
 
 " The appalling language she applied to me ? 
 I can, then ! " I broke in with a laugh that was 
 doubtless significant enough. 
 
 It only, in truth, left my friend still more 
 grave. "Well, perhaps I ought to also since 
 I've heard some of it before ! Yet I can't bear 
 it," the poor woman went on while, with the 
 same movement, she glanced, on my dressing- 
 table, at the face of my watch. "But I must 
 go back." 
 
 I kept her, however. " Ah, if you can't bear 
 it !" 
 
 " How can I stop with her, you mean ? Why, 
 just for that : to get her away. Far from this," 
 she pursued, "far from them " 
 
 "She may be different? she may be free?"
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 187 
 
 I seized her almost with joy. "Then, in spite 
 of yesterday, you believe " 
 
 " In such doings ? " Her simple description 
 of them required, in the light of her expression, 
 to be carried no further, and she gave me the 
 whole thing as she had never done. "I believe." 
 
 Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder 
 to shoulder : if I might continue sure of that 
 I should care but little what else happened. 
 My support in the presence of disaster would 
 be the same as it had been in my early need 
 of confidence, and if my friend would answer 
 for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. 
 On the point of taking leave of her, none the 
 less, I was to some extent embarrassed. " There's 
 one thing of course it occurs to me to re- 
 member. My letter, giving the alarm, will have 
 reached town before you." 
 
 I now perceived still more how she had been 
 beating about the bush and how weary at last 
 it had made her. " Your letter won't have got 
 there. Your letter never went." 
 
 " What then became of it ? " 
 
 " Goodness knows ! Master Miles " 
 
 " Do you mean he took it ? " I gasped. 
 
 She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. 
 " I mean that I saw yesterday, when I came back
 
 188 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 with Miss Flora, that it wasn't where you had 
 put it. Later in the evening I had the chance 
 to question Luke, and he declared that he had 
 neither noticed nor touched it." We could only 
 exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual 
 soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first 
 brought up the plumb with an almost elate 
 " You see ! " 
 
 "Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he 
 probably will have read it and destroyed it." 
 
 " And don't you see anything else ? " 
 
 I faced her a moment with a sad smile. "It 
 strikes me that by this time your eyes are open 
 even wider than mine." 
 
 They proved to be so indeed, but she could 
 still blush, almost, to show it. " I make out 
 now what he must have done at school." And 
 she gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost 
 droll disillusioned nod. " He stole ! " 
 
 I turned it over I tried to be more judicial. 
 "Well perhaps." 
 
 She looked as if she found me unexpectedly 
 calm. "He stole letters!" 
 
 She couldn't know my reasons for a calmness 
 after all pretty shallow; so I showed them off 
 as I might. "I hope then it was to more pur- 
 pose than in this case ! The note, at any rate,
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 189 
 
 that I put on the table yesterday," I pursued, 
 "will have given him so scant an advantage 
 for it contained only the bare demand for an 
 interview that he is already much ashamed 
 of having gone so far for so little, and that 
 what he had on his mind last evening was pre- 
 cisely the need of confession." I seemed to 
 myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to 
 see it all. " Leave us, leave us " I was already, 
 at the door, hurrying her off. "I'll get it out 
 of him. He'll meet me he'll confess. If he 
 
 confesses, he's saved. And if he's saved " 
 
 "Then you are?" The dear woman kissed 
 me on this, and I took her farewell. " I'll save 
 you without him ! " she cried as she went.
 
 XXII 
 
 YET it was when she had got off and I missed 
 her on the spot that the great pinch really 
 came. If I had counted on what it would give 
 me to find myself alone with Miles, I speedily 
 perceived, at least, that it would give me a meas- 
 ure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed 
 with apprehensions as that of my coming down to 
 learn that the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and 
 my younger pupil had already rolled out of the 
 gates. Now I was, I said to myself, face to face 
 with the elements, and for much of the rest of the 
 day, while I fought my weakness, I could con- 
 sider that I had been supremely rash. It was a 
 tighter place still than I had yet turned round in ; 
 all the more that, for the first time, I could see in 
 the aspect of others a confused reflection of the 
 crisis. What had happened naturally caused 
 them all to stare ; there was too little of the 
 explained, throw out whatever we might, in the 
 suddenness of my colleague's act. The maids 
 190
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 191 
 
 and the men looked blank ; the effect of which on 
 my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the 
 necessity of making it a positive aid. It was pre- 
 cisely, in short, by just clutching the helm that I 
 avoided total wreck ; and I dare say that, to bear 
 up at all, I became, that morning, very grand and 
 very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I 
 was charged with much to do, and I caused it to 
 be known as well that, left thus to myself, I was 
 quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that 
 manner, for the next hour or two, all over the 
 place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were 
 ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom 
 it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart. 
 
 The person it appeared least to concern proved 
 to be, till dinner, little Miles himself. My per- 
 ambulations had given me, meanwhile, no glimpse 
 of him, but they had tended to make more public 
 the change taking place in our relation as a con- 
 sequence of his having at the piano, the day before, 
 kept me, in Flora's interest, so beguiled and be- 
 fooled. The stamp of publicity had of course 
 been fully given by her confinement and depart- 
 ure, and the change itself was now ushered in by 
 our non-observance of the regular custom of the 
 schoolroom. He had already disappeared when, 
 on my way down, I pushed open his door, and I
 
 192 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 learned below that he had breakfasted in the 
 presence of a couple of the maids with Mrs. 
 Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as 
 he said, for a stroll ; than which nothing, I re- 
 flected, could better have expressed his frank 
 view of the abrupt transformation of my office. 
 What he would now permit this office to consist 
 of was yet to be settled : there was a queer relief, 
 at all events I mean for myself in especial in 
 the renouncement of one pretension. If so much 
 had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too 
 strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung 
 highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the 
 fiction that I had anything more to teach him. 
 It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks 
 in which even more than myself he carried out 
 the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to 
 him to let me off straining to meet him on the 
 ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate 
 his freedom now ; I was never to touch it again ; 
 as I had amply shown, moreover, when, on his 
 joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, 
 I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just 
 concluded, neither challenge nor hint. I had too 
 much, from this moment, my other ideas. Yet 
 when he at last arrived the difficulty of applying 
 them, the accumulations of my problem, were
 
 THE TUKX OF THE SCREW 193 
 
 brought straight home to me by the beautiful 
 little presence on which what had occurred had as 
 yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. 
 To mark, for the house, the high state I culti- 
 vated I decreed that my meals with the boy 
 should be served, as we called it, downstairs ; 
 so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous 
 pomp of the room outside of the window of which 
 I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared 
 Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce 
 have done to call light. Here at present I felt 
 afresh for I had felt it again and again how 
 my equilibrium depended on the success of my 
 rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as 
 possible to the truth that what I had to deal with 
 was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only 
 get on at all by taking " nature " into my con- 
 fidence and my account, by treating my mon- 
 strous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, 
 of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after 
 all, for a fair front, only another turn of the 
 screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, 
 none the less, could well require more tact than 
 just this attempt to supply, one's self, all the 
 nature. How could I put even a little of that 
 article into a suppression of reference to what 
 had occurred? How, on the other hand, could
 
 194 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 I make a reference without a new plunge into 
 the hideous obscure? Well, a sort of answer, 
 after a time, had come to me, and it was so 
 far confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, 
 by the quickened vision of what was rare in 
 my little companion. It was indeed as if he 
 had found even now as he had so often found 
 at lessons still some other delicate way to 
 ease me off. Wasn't there light in the fact 
 which, as we shared our solitude, broke out 
 with a specious glitter it had never yet quite 
 worn ? the fact that (opportunity aiding, 
 precious opportunity which had now come) 
 it would be preposterous, with a child so en- 
 dowed, to forgo the help one might wrest from 
 absolute intelligence ? What had his intelligence 
 been given him for but to save him ? Mightn't 
 one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an 
 angular arm over his character ? It was as if, 
 when we were face to face in the dining-room, 
 he had literally shown me the way. The roast 
 mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed 
 with attendance. Miles, before he sat down, 
 stood a moment with his hands in his pockets 
 and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on 
 the point of passing some humorous judgment. 
 But what he presently produced was : " I say, 
 my dear, is she really very awfully ill ? "
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 195 
 
 "Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll 
 presently be better. London will set her up. 
 Ely had ceased to agree with her. Come here 
 and take your mutton." 
 
 He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate care- 
 fully to his seat, and, when he was established, 
 went on. " Did Ely disagree with her so terri- 
 bly suddenly?" 
 
 "Not so suddenly as you might think. One 
 had seen it coming on." 
 
 "Then why didn't you get her off before?" 
 
 "Before what?" 
 
 "Before she became too ill to travel." 
 
 I found myself prompt. " She's not too ill to 
 travel: she only might have become so if she 
 had stayed. This was just the moment to 
 seize. The journey will dissipate the influence " 
 oh, I was grand! "and carry it off." 
 
 "I see, I see" Miles, for that matter, was 
 grand too. He settled to his repast with the 
 charming little "table manner" that, from the 
 day of his arrival, had relieved me of all gross- 
 ness of admonition. Whatever he had been 
 driven from school for, it was not for ugly 
 feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, to- 
 day; but he was unmistakeably more conscious. 
 He was discernibly trying to take for granted
 
 196 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 more things than he found, without assistance, 
 quite easy ; and he dropped into peaceful silence 
 while he felt his situation. Our meal was of 
 the briefest mine a vain pretence, and I had 
 the things immediately removed. While this 
 was done Miles stood again with his hands in 
 his little pockets and his back to me stood 
 and looked out of the wide window through 
 which, that other day, I had seen what pulled 
 me up. We continued silent while the maid 
 was with us as silent, it whimsically occurred 
 to me, as some young couple who, on their 
 wedding- journey, at the inn, feel shy in the 
 presence of the waiter. He turned round only 
 when the waiter had left us. " Well so we're 
 alone I "
 
 XXIII 
 
 "On, more or less." I fancy my smile was 
 pale. "Not absolutely. We shouldn't like 
 that ! " I went on. 
 
 " No I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we 
 have the others." 
 
 " We have the others we have indeed the 
 others," I concurred. 
 
 " Yet even though we have them," he re- 
 turned, still with his hands in his pockets and 
 planted there in front of me, "they don't much 
 count, do they?" 
 
 I made the best of it, but I felt wan. "It 
 depends on what you call ' much ' ! " 
 
 " Yes " with all accommodation " every- 
 thing depends ! " On this, however, he faced 
 to the window again and presently reached it 
 with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He 
 remained there awhile, with his forehead against 
 the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs 
 I knew and the dull things of November. I 
 197
 
 198 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 had always my hypocrisy of "work," behind 
 which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying my- 
 self with it there as I had repeatedly done at 
 those moments of torment that I have described 
 as the moments of my knowing the children 
 to be given to something from which I was 
 barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being 
 prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary 
 impression dropped on me as I extracted a mean- 
 ing from the boy's embarrassed back none 
 other than the impression that I was not barred 
 now. This inference grew in a few minutes 
 to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with 
 the direct perception that it was positively he 
 who was. The frames and squares of the great 
 window were a kind of image, for him, of a 
 kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any 
 rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, 
 but not comfortable : I took it in with a throb 
 of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the 
 haunted pane, for something he couldn't see ? 
 and wasn't it the first time in the whole 
 business that he had known such a lapse? The 
 first, the very first : I found it a splendid por- 
 tent. It made him anxious, though he watched 
 himself; he had been anxious all day and, even 
 while in his usual sweet little manner he sat
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 199 
 
 at table, had needed all his small strange genius 
 to give it a gloss. When he at last turned 
 round to meet me, it was almost as if this 
 genius had succumbed. " Well, I think I'm 
 glad Ely agrees with me ! " 
 
 " You would certainly seem to have seen, these 
 twenty-four hours, a good deal more of it than 
 for some time before. I hope," I went on 
 bravely, "that you've been enjoying yourself." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I've been ever so far ; all round 
 about miles and miles away. I've never been 
 so free." 
 
 He had really a manner of his own, and I 
 could only try to keep up with him. " Well, do 
 you like it ? " 
 
 He stood there smiling ; then at last he put 
 into two words "Do you?" more discrimi- 
 nation than I had ever heard two words contain. 
 Before I had time to deal with that, however, he 
 continued as if with the sense that this was an 
 impertinence to be softened. " Nothing could 
 be more charming than the way you take it, for 
 of course if we're alone together now it's you 
 that are alone most. But I hope," he threw in, 
 " you don't particularly mind ! " 
 
 "Having to do with you?" I asked. "My 
 dear child, how can I help minding? Though
 
 200 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 I've renounced all claim to your company, 
 you're so beyond me, I at least greatly enjoy 
 it. What else should I stay on for?" 
 
 He looked at me more directly, and the expres- 
 sion of his face, graver now, struck me as the 
 most beautiful I had ever found in it. " You 
 stay on just for that?" 
 
 " Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from 
 the tremendous interest I take in you till some- 
 thing can be done for you that may be more 
 worth your while. That needn't surprise you." 
 My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to 
 suppress the shake. " Don't you remember how 
 I told you, when I came and sat on your bed the 
 night of the storm, that there was nothing in the 
 world I wouldn't do for you ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " He, on his side, more and more 
 visibly nervous, had a tone to master ; but he was 
 so much more successful than I that, laughing 
 out through his gravity, he could pretend we 
 were pleasantly jesting. "Only that, I think, 
 was to get me to do something for you!" 
 
 " It was partly to get you to do something," I 
 conceded. " But, you know, you didn't do it." 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superfi- 
 cial eagerness, " you wanted me to tell you some- 
 thing."
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 201 
 
 "That's it. Out, straight out. What you 
 have on your mind, you know." 
 
 "Ah, then, is that what you've stayed over 
 for?" 
 
 He spoke with a gaiety through which I could 
 still catch the finest little quiver of resentful 
 passion ; but I can't begin to express the effect 
 upon me of an implication of surrender even so 
 faint. It was as if what I had yearned for had 
 come at last only to astonish me. " Well, yes 
 I may as well make a clean breast of it. It was 
 precisely for that." 
 
 He waited so long that I supposed it for the 
 purpose of repudiating the assumption on which 
 my action had been founded ; but what he finally 
 said was : " Do you mean now here ? " 
 
 "There couldn't be a better place or time." 
 He looked round him uneasily, and I had the 
 rare oh, the queer ! impression of the very 
 first symptom I had seen in him of the approach 
 of immediate fear. It was as if he were sud- 
 denly afraid of me which struck me indeed as 
 perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the 
 very pang of the effort I felt it vain to try stern- 
 ness, and I heard myself the next instant so 
 gentle as to be almost grotesque. " You want so 
 to go out again ? "
 
 202 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 " Awfully ! " He smiled at me heroically, and 
 the touching little bravery of it was enhanced by 
 his actually flushing with pain. He had picked 
 up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood 
 twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was 
 just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of 
 what I was doing. To do it in any way was 
 an act of violence, for what did it consist of but 
 the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt 
 on a small helpless creature who had been for 
 me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful 
 intercourse ? Wasn't it base to create for a being 
 so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness ? I sup- 
 pose I now read into our situation a clearness 
 it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem 
 to see our poor eyes already lighted with some 
 spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to 
 come. So we circled about, with terrors and 
 scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But 
 it was for each other we feared ! That kept us 
 a little longer suspended and unbruised. "I'll 
 tell you everything," Miles said "I mean I'll 
 tell you anything you like. You'll stay on with 
 me, and we shall both be all right and I will tell 
 you I will. But not now." 
 
 "Why not now?" 
 
 My insistence turned him from me and kept
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 203 
 
 him once more at his window in a silence during 
 which, between us, you might have heard a pin 
 drop. Then he was before me again with the air 
 of a person for whom, outside, someone who had 
 frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. "I 
 have to see Luke." 
 
 I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar 
 a lie, and I felt proportionately ashamed. But, 
 horrible as it was, his lies made up my truth. I 
 achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. 
 "Well, then, go to Luke, and I'll wait for what 
 you promise. Only, in return for that, satisfy, 
 before you leave me, one very much smaller 
 request." 
 
 He looked as if he felt he had succeeded 
 enough to be able still a little to bargain. 
 "Very much smaller ?" 
 
 " Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me " 
 oh, my work preoccupied me, and I was off- 
 hand ! " if, yesterday afternoon, from the table 
 in the hall, you took, you know, my letter."
 
 XXIV 
 
 MY sense of how he received this suffered for a 
 minute from something that I can describe only 
 as a fierce split of my attention a stroke that at 
 first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the 
 mere blind movement of getting hold of him, 
 drawing him close, and, while I just fell for sup- 
 port against the nearest piece of furniture, in- 
 stinctively keeping, him with his back to the win- 
 dow. The appearance was full upon us that I 
 had already had to deal with here : Peter Quint 
 had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. 
 The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he 
 had reached the window, and then I knew that, 
 close to the glass and glaring in through it, he 
 offered once more to the room his white face of 
 damnation. It represents but grossly what took 
 place within me at the sight to say that on the 
 second my decision was made; yet I believe that 
 no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time 
 recovered her grasp of the act. It came to me in 
 
 204
 
 THE TURN OP THE SCREW 205 
 
 the very horror of the immediate presence that 
 the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw 
 and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The 
 inspiration I can call it by no other name was 
 that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, 
 I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a 
 human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised 
 it I saw how the human soul held out, in the 
 tremor of my hands, at arm's length had a per- 
 fect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. 
 The face that was close to mine was as white as 
 the face against the glass, and out of it presently 
 came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from 
 much further away, that I drank like a waft of 
 fragrance. 
 
 "Yes I took it." 
 
 At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew 
 him close ; and while I held him to my breast, 
 where I could feel in the sudden fever of his little 
 body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I 
 kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw 
 it move and shift its posture. I have likened it 
 to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, 
 was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My 
 present quickened courage, however, was such 
 that, not too much to let it through, I had to 
 shade, as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the
 
 206 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 glare of the face was again at the window, the 
 scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was 
 the very confidence that I might now defy him, 
 as well as the positive certitude, by this time, of 
 the child's unconsciousness, that made me go on. 
 " What did you take it for ? " 
 
 "To see what you said about me." 
 
 " You opened the letter ? " 
 
 "I opened it." 
 
 My eyes were now, as I held him off a little 
 again, on Miles's own face, in which the collapse 
 of mockery showed me how complete was the 
 ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was 
 that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed 
 and his communication stopped: he knew that 
 he was in presence, but knew not of what, and 
 knew still less that I also was and that I did 
 know. And what did this strain of trouble mat- 
 ter when my eyes went back to the window only 
 to see that the air was clear again and by my 
 personal triumph the influence quenched ? 
 There was nothing there. I felt that the cause 
 was mine and that I should surely get all. " And 
 you found nothing 1 " I let my elation out. 
 
 He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little 
 headshake. "Nothing." 
 
 " Nothing, nothing I " I almost shouted in my 
 
 joy-
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 207 
 
 "Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated. 
 
 I kissed his forehead ; it was drenched. " So 
 what have you done with it ? " 
 
 "I've burnt it." 
 
 " Burnt it ? " It was now or never. " Is that 
 what you did at school ? " 
 
 Oh, what this brought up ! " At school ? " 
 
 " Did you take letters? or other things ? " 
 
 " Other things ? " He appeared now to be 
 thinking of something far off and that reached 
 him only through the pressure of his anxiety. 
 Yet it did reach him. "Did I steal?" 
 
 I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as 
 well as wonder if it were more strange to put to 
 a gentleman such a question or to see him take it 
 with allowances that gave the very distance of 
 his fall in the world. " Was it for that you 
 mightn't go back?" 
 
 The only thing he felt was rather a dreary 
 little surprise. " Did you know I mightn't go 
 back?" 
 
 "I know everything." 
 
 He gave me at this the longest and strangest 
 look. "Everything?" 
 
 " Everything. Therefore did you ? " But 
 
 I couldn't say it again. 
 
 Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't 
 steal."
 
 208 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 My face must have shown him I believed him 
 utterly; yet my hands but it was for pure ten- 
 derness shook him as if to ask him why, if it 
 was all for nothing, he had condemned me to 
 months of torment. " What then did you 
 do?" 
 
 He looked in vague pain all round the top of 
 the room and drew his breath, two or three times 
 over, as if with difficulty. He might have been 
 standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his 
 eyes to some faint green twilight. "Well I 
 said things." 
 
 "Only that?" 
 
 " They thought it was enough ! " 
 
 " To turn you out for ? " 
 
 Never, truly, had a person " turned out " shown 
 so little to explain it as this little person ! He 
 appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner 
 quite detached and almost helpless. " Well, I 
 suppose I oughtn't." 
 
 " But to whom did you say them ? " 
 
 He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped 
 he had lost it. " I don't know ! " 
 
 He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his 
 surrender, which was indeed practically, by this 
 time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. 
 But I was infatuated I was blind with victory,
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 209 
 
 though even then the very effect that was to have 
 brought him so much nearer was already that of 
 added separation. " Was it to everyone ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " No ; it was only to " But he gave a sick 
 
 little headshake. " I don't remember their names." 
 " Were they then so many ? " 
 " No only a few. Those I liked." 
 Those he liked ? I seemed to float not into 
 clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a 
 minute there had come to me out of my very pity 
 the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. 
 It was for the instant confounding and bottom- 
 less, for if he were innocent, what then on earth 
 was I? Paralysed, while it lasted, by the mere 
 brush of the question, I let him go a little, so that, 
 with a deep-drawn sigh, he turned away from me 
 again; which, as he faced toward the clear win- 
 dow, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now 
 there to keep him from. " And did they repeat 
 what you said ? " I went on after a moment. 
 
 He was soon at some distance from me, still 
 breathing hard and again with the air, though now 
 without anger for it, of being confined against his 
 will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked 
 up at the dim day as if, of what had hitherto sus- 
 tained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable
 
 210 THE TUKN OF THE SCREW 
 
 anxiety. " Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied 
 " they must have repeated them. To those they 
 liked," he added. 
 
 There was, somehow, less of it than I had ex- 
 pected; but I turned it over. " And these things 
 came round ? " 
 
 " To the masters ? Oh, yes ! " he answered very 
 simply. " But I didn't know they'd tell." 
 
 " The masters ? They didn't they've never 
 told. That's why I ask you." 
 
 He turned to me again his little beautiful 
 fevered face. "Yes, it was too bad." 
 
 "Too bad?" 
 
 " What I suppose I sometimes said. To write 
 home." 
 
 I can't name the exquisite pathos of the con- 
 tradiction given to such a speech by such a 
 speaker ; I only know that the next instant I 
 heard myself throw off with homely force : 
 " Stuff and nonsense ! " But the next after that 
 I must have sounded stern enough. " What were 
 these things ? " 
 
 My sternness was all for his judge, his execu- 
 tioner ; yet it made him avert himself again, and 
 that movement made me, with a single bound 
 and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon 
 him. For there again, against the glass, as if
 
 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 211 
 
 to blight his confession and stay his answer, 
 was the hideous author of our woe the white 
 face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the 
 drop of my victory and all the return of my 
 battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap 
 only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, 
 from the midst of my act, meet it with a divina- 
 tion, and on the perception that even now he 
 only guessed, and that the window was still to 
 his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to 
 convert the climax of his dismay into the very 
 proof of his liberation. "No more, no more, no 
 more ! " I shrieked, as I tried to press him against 
 me, to my visitant. 
 
 " Is she here f " Miles panted as he caught 
 with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. 
 Then as his strange " she " staggered me and, 
 with a gasp, I echoed it, " Miss Jessel, Miss 
 Jessel ! " he with a sudden fury gave me 
 back. 
 
 I seized, stupefied, his supposition some se- 
 quel to what we had done to Flora, but this 
 made me only want to show him that it was 
 better still than that. " It's not Miss Jessel ! 
 But it's at the window straight before us. 
 It's there the coward horror, there for the last 
 time ! "
 
 212 THE TURN OF THE SCREW 
 
 At this, after a second in which his head made 
 the movement of a baffled dog's on a scent and 
 then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, 
 he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glar- 
 ing vainly over the place and missing wholly, 
 though it now, to my sense, filled the room like 
 the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming pres- 
 ence. "It's he? " 
 
 I was so determined to have all my proof that 
 I flashed into ice to challenge him. " Whom do 
 you mean by * he ' ? " 
 
 " Peter Quint you devil ! " HLs face gave 
 again, round the room, its convulsed supplica- 
 tion. " Where f " 
 
 They are in my ears still, his supreme sur- 
 render of the name and his tribute to my devo- 
 tion. " What does he matter now, my own ? 
 what will he ever matter? I have you," I 
 launched at the beast, " but he has lost you 
 for ever ! " Then, for the demonstration of my 
 work, " There, there ! " I said to Miles. 
 
 But he had already jerked straight round, 
 stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. 
 With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of 
 he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over 
 an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered 
 him might have been that of catching him in
 
 THE TUKN OF THE SCEEW 213 
 
 his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him it may 
 be imagined with what a passion ; but at the 
 end of a minute I began to feel what it truly 
 was that I held. We were alone with the quiet 
 day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had 
 stopped.
 
 COVEKING END

 
 I 
 
 COVEEING END 
 
 AT the foot of the staircase he waited and lis- 
 tened, thinking he had heard her call to him 
 from the gallery, high aloft but out of view, to 
 which he had allowed her independent access and 
 whence indeed, on her first going up, the sound 
 of her appreciation had reached him in rapid 
 movements, evident rushes and dashes, and in 
 droll, charming cries that echoed through the 
 place. He had afterwards, expectant and rest- 
 less, been, for another look, to the house-door, 
 and then had fidgeted back into the hall, where 
 her voice again caught him. It was many a day 
 since such a voice had sounded in those empty 
 chambers, and never perhaps, in all the years, 
 for poor Chivers, had any voice at all launched 
 a note so friendly and so free. 
 
 " Oh, no, mum, there ain't no one whatever 
 come yet. It's quite all right, mum, you can 
 please yourself ! " If he left her to range, all 
 217
 
 218 COVERING END 
 
 his pensive little economy seemed to say, wasn't 
 it just his poor pickings ? He quitted the' stairs, 
 but stopped again, with his hand to his ear, as 
 he heard her once more appeal to him. " Lots 
 
 of lovely ? Lovely what, mum ? Little ups 
 
 and downs ? " he quavered aloft. " Oh, as you 
 say, mum : as many as in a poor man's life I " 
 She was clearly disposed, as she roamed in de- 
 light from point to point, to continue to talk, 
 and, with his better ear and his scooped hand, he 
 continued to listen hard. " ' Dear little crooked 
 steps ' ? Yes, mum ; please mind 'em, mum : 
 they be cruel in the dark corners ! " She ap- 
 peared to take another of her light scampers, the 
 sign of a fresh discovery and a fresh response ; 
 at which he felt his heart warm with the success 
 of a trust of her that might after all have been 
 rash. Once more her voice reached him and 
 once more he gossiped back. " Coming up too ? 
 Not if you'll kindly indulge me, mum I must 
 be where I can watch the bell. It takes watch- 
 ing as well as hearing ! " he dropped, as he 
 resumed his round, to a murmur of great patience. 
 This was taken up the next moment by the husky 
 plaint of the signal itself, which seemed to con- 
 fess equally to short wind and creaking joints. 
 It moved, however, distinguishably, and its mo-
 
 COVERING END 219 
 
 tion made him start much more as if he had been 
 guilty of sleeping at his post than as if he had 
 waited half the day. " Mercy, if I didn't watch 
 
 ! " He shuffled across the wide stone-paved 
 
 hall and, losing himself beneath the great arch 
 of the short passage to the entrance-front, has- 
 tened to admit his new visitor. He gives us 
 thereby the use of his momentary absence for a 
 look at the place he has left. 
 
 This is the central hall, high and square, brown 
 and grey, nagged beneath and timbered above, 
 of an old English country-house ; an apartment 
 in which a single survey is a perception of long 
 and lucky continuities. It would have been diffi- 
 cult to find elsewhere anything at once so old and 
 so actual, anything that had plainly come so far, 
 far down without, at any moment of the endless 
 journey, losing its way. To stand there and look 
 round was to wonder a good deal yet without 
 arriving at an answer whether it had been most 
 neglected or most cherished ; there was such 
 resignation in its long survival and yet such 
 bravery in its high polish. If it had never been 
 spoiled, this was partly, no doubt, because it had 
 been, for a century, given up ; but what it had 
 been given up to was, after all, homely and fa- 
 miliar use. It had in it at the present moment
 
 220 COVERING END 
 
 indeed much of the chill of fallen fortunes ; but 
 there was no concession in its humility and no 
 hypocrisy in its welcome. It was magnificent 
 and shabby, and the eyes of the dozen dark old 
 portraits seemed, in their eternal attention, to 
 count the cracks in the pavement, the rents in 
 the seats of the chairs, and the missing tones in 
 the Flemish tapestry. Above the tapestry, which, 
 in its turn, was above the high oak wainscot, 
 most of these stiff images on the side on which 
 it principally reigned were placed; and they 
 held up their heads to assure all comers that a 
 tone or two was all that was missing, and that 
 they had never waked up in winter dawns to any 
 glimmer of bereavement, in the long night, of 
 any relic or any feature. Such as it was, the com- 
 pany was all there ; every inch of old oak, every 
 yard of old arras, every object of ornament or of 
 use to which these surfaces formed so rare a back- 
 ground. If the watchers on the walls had ever 
 found a gap in their own rank, the ancient roof, 
 of a certainty, would have been shaken by their 
 collective gasp. As a matter of fact it was rich 
 and firm it had almost the dignity of the vault 
 of a church. On this Saturday afternoon in 
 August, a hot, still day, such of the casements 
 as freely worked in the discoloured glass of the
 
 COVERING END 221 
 
 windows stood open in one quarter to a terrace 
 that overlooked a park and in another to a won- 
 derful old empty court that communicated with 
 a wonderful old empty garden. The staircase, 
 wide and straight, mounted, full in sight, to a 
 landing that was half-way up ; and on the right, 
 as you faced this staircase, a door opened out of 
 the brown panelling into a glimpse of a little 
 morning-room, where, in a slanted, gilded light, 
 there was brownness too, mixed with notes of old 
 yellow. On the left, toward court and garden, 
 another door stood open to the warm air. Still 
 as you faced the staircase you had at your right, 
 between that monument and the morning-room, 
 the arch through which Chivers had disappeared. 
 His reappearance interrupts and yet in a man- 
 ner, after all, quickens our intense impression ; 
 Chivers on the spot, and in this severe but spa- 
 cious setting, was so perfect an image of im- 
 memorial domesticity. It would have been 
 impossible perhaps, however, either to tell his 
 age or to name his use : he was of the age of 
 all the history that lurked in all the corners 
 and of any use whatever you might be so good 
 as still to find for him. Considerably shrunken 
 and completely silvered, he had perpetual agree- 
 ment in the droop of his kind white head and
 
 222 COVERING END 
 
 perpetual inquiry in the jerk of the idle old 
 hands now almost covered by the sleeves of 
 the black dress-coat which, twenty years before, 
 must have been by a century or two the newest 
 thing in the house and into which his years 
 appeared to have declined very much as a 
 shrunken family moves into a part of its habi- 
 tation. This attire was completed by a white 
 necktie that, in honour of the day, he himself 
 had this morning done up. The humility he 
 betrayed and the oddity he concealed were alike 
 brought out by his juxtaposition with the gen- 
 tleman he had admitted. 
 
 To admit Mr. Prodmore was anywhere and at 
 any time, as you would immediately have recog- 
 nised, an immense admission. He was a per- 
 sonage of great presence and weight, with a 
 large smooth face in which a small sharp mean- 
 ing was planted like a single pin in the tight 
 red toilet-cushion of a guest-chamber. He wore 
 a blue frock-coat and a stiff white waistcoat 
 and a high white hat that he kept on his head 
 with a kind of protesting cock, while in his 
 buttonhole nestled a bold prize plant on which 
 he occasionally lowered a proprietary eye that 
 seemed to remind it of its being born to a pub- 
 lic career. Mr. Prodmore's appearance had evi-
 
 COVERING END 223 
 
 dently been thought out, but it might have 
 struck you that the old portraits took it in 
 with a sterner stare, with a fixedness indeed in 
 which a visitor more sensitive would have read 
 a consciousness of his remaining, in their pres- 
 ence, so jauntily, so vulgarly covered. He had 
 never a glance for them, and it would have been 
 easy after a minute to see that this was an old 
 story between them. Their manner, as it were, 
 sensibly increased the coolness. This coolness 
 became a high rigour as Mr. Prodmore encoun- 
 tered, from the very threshold, a disappointment. 
 
 " No one here ? " he indignantly demanded. 
 
 "I'm sorry to say no one has come, sir," 
 Chivers replied; "but I've had a telegram from 
 Captain Yule." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore's apprehension flared out. "Not 
 to say he ain't coming? " 
 
 "He was to take the 2.20 from Paddington; 
 he certainly should be here ! " The old man 
 spoke as if his non-arrival were the most unac- 
 countable thing in the world, especially for a 
 poor person ever respectful of the mystery of 
 causes. 
 
 " He should have been here this hour or more. 
 And so should my fly-away daughter ! " 
 
 Chivers surrounded this description of Miss
 
 224 COVERING END 
 
 Prodmore with the deep discretion of silence, 
 and then, after a moment, evidently reflected 
 that silence, in a world bestrewn with traps to 
 irreverence, might be as rash as speech. " Were 
 they coming a together, sir ? " 
 
 He had scarcely mended the matter, for his 
 visitor gave an inconsequent stare. "Together? 
 for what do you take Miss Prodmore ? " This 
 young lady's parent glared about him again as 
 if to alight on something else that was out of 
 place; but the good intentions expressed in the 
 attitude of every object might presently have 
 been presumed to soothe his irritation. It had 
 at any rate the effect of bridging, for poor 
 Chivers, some of his gaps. " It is in a sense 
 true that their ' coming together,' as you call it, 
 is exactly what I've made my plans for today : 
 my calculation was that we should all punctually 
 converge on this spot. Attended by her trusty 
 maid, Miss Prodmore, who happens to be on a 
 week's visit to her grandmother at Bellborough, 
 was to take the 1.40 from that place. I was to 
 drive over ten miles from the most conven- 
 ient of my seats. Captain Yule " the speaker 
 wound up his statement as with the mention of 
 the last touch in a masterpiece of his own sketch- 
 ing " was finally to shake off for a few hours 
 the peculiar occupations that engage him."
 
 COVERING END 225 
 
 The old man listened with his head askance 
 to favour his good ear, but his visible attention 
 all on a sad spot in one of the half-dozen worn 
 rugs. " They must be peculiar, sir, when a gen- 
 tleman comes into a property like this and goes 
 three months without so much as a nat'ral 
 
 curiosity ! I don't speak of anything but 
 
 what is nat'ral, sir ; but there have been people 
 here " 
 
 " There have repeatedly been people here ! " 
 Mr. Prodmore complacently interrupted. 
 
 " As you say, sir to be shown over. With 
 the master himself never shown ! " Chivers dis- 
 mally commented. 
 
 " He shall be, so that nobody can miss him ! " 
 Mr. Prodmore, for his own reassurance as well, 
 hastened to retort. 
 
 His companion risked a tiny explanation. " It 
 will be a mercy indeed to look on him ; but I 
 meant that he has not been taken round." 
 
 "That's what I meant too. Til take him 
 round and round: it's exactly what I've come 
 for ! " Mr. Prodmore rang out ; and his eyes 
 made the lower circuit again, looking as pleased 
 as such a pair of eyes could look with nobody 
 as yet quite good enough either to terrify or to 
 tickle. " He can't fail to be affected, though
 
 226 COVERING END 
 
 he has been up to his neck in such a different 
 class of thing." 
 
 Chivers clearly wondered awhile what class of 
 thing it could be. Then he expressed a timid 
 hope. " In nothing, I dare say, but what's right, 
 sir ?" 
 
 " In everything," Mr. Prodmore distinctly in- 
 formed him, " that's wrong ! But here he is ! " 
 that gentleman added with elation as the door- 
 bell again sounded. Chivers, under the double 
 agitation of the appeal and the disclosure, pro- 
 ceeded to the front as fast as circumstances 
 allowed ; while Mr. Prodmore, left alone, would 
 have been observed had not his solitude been 
 so bleak to recover a degree of cheerfulness. 
 Cheerfulness in solitude at Covering End was 
 certainly not irresistible, but particular feelings 
 and reasons had pitched, for their campaign, 
 the starched, if now somewhat ruffled, tent of 
 his large white waistcoat. If they had issued 
 audibly from that pavilion, they would have 
 represented to us his consciousness of the rein- 
 forcement he might bring up for attack should 
 Captain Yule really resist the house. The sound 
 he next heard from the front caused him none 
 the less, for that matter, to articulate a certain 
 drop. " Only Cora ? Well," he added in a
 
 COVERING END 227 
 
 tone somewhat at variance with his " only," " he 
 shan't, at any rate, resist Tier ! " This announce- 
 ment would have quickened a spectator's interest 
 in the young lady whom Chivers now introduced 
 and followed, a young lady who straightway 
 found herself the subject of traditionary disci- 
 pline. " I've waited. What do you mean ? " 
 
 Cora Prodmore, who had a great deal of colour 
 in her cheeks and a great deal more a bold 
 variety of kinds in the extremely high pitch 
 of her new, smart clothes, meant, on the whole, 
 it was easy to see, very little, and met this 
 challenge with still less jshow of support either 
 from the sources I have mentioned or from any 
 others. A dull, fresh, honest, overdressed dam- 
 sel of two-and-twenty, she was too much out 
 of breath, too much flurried and frightened, to 
 do more than stammer : " Waited, papa ? Oh, 
 I'm sorry ! " 
 
 Her regret appeared to strike her father still 
 more as an impertinence than as a vanity. 
 " Would you then, if I had not had patience 
 for you, have wished not to find me ? Why the 
 dickens are you so late ? " 
 
 Agitated, embarrassed, the girl was at a loss. 
 " I'll tell you, papa ! " But she followed up her 
 pledge with an air of vacuity and then, dropping
 
 228 COVERING END 
 
 into the nearest seat, simply closed her eyes to 
 her danger. If she desired relief, she had caught 
 at the one way to get it. "I feel rather faint. 
 Could I have some tea ? " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore considered both the idea and his 
 daughter's substantial form. "Well, as I shall 
 expect you to put forth all your powers yes ! " 
 He turned to Chivers. " Some tea." 
 
 The old man's eyes had attached themselves to 
 Miss Prodmore's symptoms with more solicitude 
 than those of her parent. " I did think it might 
 be required ! " Then as he gained the door of 
 the morning-room : " I'll lay it out here." 
 
 The young lady, on his withdrawal, recovered 
 herself sufficiently to rise again. " It was my 
 train, papa so very awfully behind. I walked 
 up, you know, also, from the station there's 
 such a lovely footpath across the park." 
 
 " You've been roaming the country then 
 alone ? " Mr. Prodmore inquired. 
 
 The girl protested with instant eagerness 
 against any such picture. "Oh, dear no, not 
 alone ! " She spoke, absurdly, as if she had had 
 a train of attendants ; but it was an instant be- 
 fore she could complete the assurance. "There 
 were ever so many people about." 
 
 " Nothing is more possible than that there
 
 COVERING END 229 
 
 should be too many ! " said her father, speaking 
 as for his personal convenience, but presenting 
 that as enough. " But where, among them all," 
 he demanded, " is your trusty maid ? " 
 
 Cora's reply made up in promptitude what it 
 lacked in felicity. "I didn't bring her." She 
 looked at the old portraits as if to appeal to them 
 to help her to remember why. Apparently in- 
 deed they gave a sign, for she presently went 
 on: "She was so extremely unwell." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore met this with reprobation. 
 "Wasn't she to understand from the first that 
 we don't permit " 
 
 " Anything of that sort ? " the girl recalled 
 it at least as a familiar law. " Oh, yes, papa 
 I thought she did." 
 
 "But she doesn't?" Mr. Prodmore pressed 
 the point. Poor Cora, at a loss again, appeared 
 to wonder if the point had better be a failure of 
 brain or of propriety, but her companion con- 
 tinued to press. "What on earth's the matter 
 with her ? " 
 
 She again communed with their silent wit- 
 nesses. " I really don't quite know, but I think 
 that at Granny's she eats too much." 
 
 " I'll soon put an end to that ! " Mr. Prodmore 
 returned with decision. " You expect then to
 
 230 COVERING END 
 
 pursue your adventures quite into the night to 
 return to Bellborough as you came ? " 
 
 The girl had by this time begun a little to find 
 her feet. " Exactly as I came, papa dear, under 
 the protection of a new friend I've just made, a 
 lady whom I met in the train and who is also 
 going back by the 6.19. She was, like myself, on 
 her way to this place, and I expected to find her 
 here." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore chilled on the spot any such ex- 
 pectations. " What does she want at this place? " 
 
 Cora was clearly stronger for her new friend 
 than for herself. "She wants to see it." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore reflected on this complication. 
 "Today?" It was practically presumptuous. 
 "Today won't do." 
 
 " So I suggested," the girl declared. " But do 
 you know what she said ? " 
 
 "How should I know," he coldly demanded, 
 " what a nobody says ? " 
 
 But on this, as if with the returning taste of 
 a new strength, his daughter could categorically 
 meet him. " She's not a nobody. She's an 
 American." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, for a moment, was struck : he 
 embraced the place, instinctively, in a flash of 
 calculation. " An American ? "
 
 COVERING END 231 
 
 "Yes, and she's wild " 
 
 He knew all about that. " Americans mostly 
 are ! " 
 
 "I mean," said Cora, "to see this place. 
 'Wild' was what she herself called it and I 
 think she also said she was 'mad.'" 
 
 "She gave" Mr. Prodmore reviewed the 
 affair "a fine account of herself ! But she 
 won't do." 
 
 The effect of her new acquaintance on his 
 companion had been such that she could, after 
 an instant, react against this sentence. " Well, 
 when I told her that this particular day perhaps 
 wouldn't, she said it would just have to." 
 
 " Have to do ? " Mr. Prodmore showed again, 
 through a chink, his speculative eye. " For what, 
 then, with such grand airs ? " 
 
 "Why, I suppose, for what Americans want." 
 
 He measured the quantity. " They want 
 everything." 
 
 " Then I wonder," said Cora, " that she hasn't 
 arrived." 
 
 " When she does arrive," he answered, " I'll 
 tackle her ; and I shall thank you, in future, not 
 to take up, in trains, with indelicate women of 
 whom you know nothing." 
 
 "Oh, I did know something," his daughter
 
 232 COVERING END 
 
 pleaded ; " for I saw her yesterday at Bellbor- 
 ough." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore contested even this freedom. 
 "And what was she doing at Bellborough?" 
 
 " Staying at the Blue Dragon, to see the old 
 abbey. She says she just loves old abbeys. It 
 seems to be the same feeling," the girl went on, 
 "that brought her over, today, to see this old 
 house." 
 
 " She ' just loves ' old houses ? Then why the 
 deuce didn't she accompany you properly, since 
 she is so pushing, to the door?" 
 
 "Because she went off in a fly," Cora ex- 
 plained, "to see, first, the old hospital. She just 
 loves old hospitals. She asked me if this isn't a 
 show-house. I told her " the girl was anxious 
 to disclaim responsibility " that I hadn't the 
 least idea." 
 
 "It is!" Mr. Prodmore cried almost with fe- 
 rocity. " I wonder, on such a speech, what she 
 thought of you! " 
 
 Miss Prodmore meditated with distinct humble- 
 ness. " I know. She told me." 
 
 He had looked her up and down. "That 
 you're really a hopeless frump ? " 
 
 Cora, oddly enough, seemed almost to court 
 this description. "That I'm not, as she rather 
 funnily called it, a show-girl."
 
 COVERING END 233 
 
 "Think of your having to be reminded by 
 the very strangers you pick up," Mr. Prodmore 
 groaned, "of what my daughter should pre- 
 eminently be ! Your friend, all the same," he 
 bethought himself, "is evidently loud." 
 
 " Well, when she comes," the girl again so far 
 agreed as to reply, "you'll certainly hear her. 
 But don't judge her, papa, till you do. She's 
 tremendously clever," she risked "there seems 
 to be nothing she doesn't know." 
 
 "And there seems to be nothing you do! 
 You're not tremendously clever," Mr. Prodmore 
 pursued; "so you'll permit me to demand of 
 you a slight effort of intelligence." Then, as 
 for the benefit of the listening walls themselves, 
 he struck the high note. " I'm expecting Cap- 
 tain Yule." 
 
 Cora's consciousness blinked. " The owner of 
 this property ? " 
 
 Her father's tone showed his reserves. " That's 
 what it depends on you to make him ! " 
 
 " On me ? " the girl gasped. 
 
 " He came into it three months ago by the 
 death of his great-uncle, who had lived to ninety- 
 three, but who, having quarrelled mortally with 
 his father, had always refused to receive either 
 sire or son."
 
 234 COVERING END 
 
 Our young lady bent her eyes on this page 
 of family history, then raised them but dimly 
 lighted. "But now, at least, doesn't he live 
 here?" 
 
 "So little," her companion replied, "that he 
 comes here today for the very first time. I've 
 some business to discuss with him that can best 
 be discussed on this spot ; and it's a vital part 
 of that business that you too should take pains 
 to make him welcome." 
 
 Miss Prodmore failed to ignite. " In his own 
 house ? " 
 
 " That it's not his own house is just the point 
 I seek to make ! The way I look at it is that 
 it's my house ! The way I look at it even, my 
 dear " in his demonstration of his ways of look- 
 ing Mr. Prodmore literally expanded "is that 
 it's our house. The whole thing is mortgaged, 
 as it stands, for every penny of its value ; and 
 I'm in the pleasant position do you follow 
 me ? " he trumpeted. 
 
 Cora jumped. "Of holding the mortgages?" 
 
 He caught her with a smile of approval and 
 indeed of surprise. " You keep up with me 
 better than I hoped. I hold every scrap of 
 paper, and it's a precious collection." 
 
 She smothered, perceptibly, a vague female
 
 COVEEING END 235 
 
 sigh, glancing over the place more attentively 
 than she had yet done. "Do you mean that 
 you can come down on him ? " 
 
 " I don't need to ' come,' my dear I am 
 ' down.' This is down ! " and the iron point 
 of Mr. Prodmore's stick fairly struck, as he 
 rapped it, a spark from the cold pavement. " I 
 came many weeks ago commercially speaking 
 and haven't since budged from the place." 
 
 The girl moved a little about the hall, then 
 turned with a spasm of courage. "Are you going 
 to be very hard ? " 
 
 If she read the eyes with which he met her she 
 found in them, in spite of a certain accompanying 
 show of pleasantry, her answer. "Hard with 
 
 "No that doesn't matter. Hard with the 
 Captain." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore thought an instant. " ' Hard ' 
 is a stupid, shuffling term. What do you mean 
 by it?" 
 
 "Well, I don't understand business," Cora 
 said ; " but I think I understand you, papa, 
 enough to gather that you've got, as usual, a 
 striking advantage." 
 
 "As usual, I have scored; but my advantage 
 won't be striking perhaps till I have sent the
 
 236 COVERING END 
 
 blow home. What I appeal to you, as a father, at 
 present to do " he continued broadly to demon- 
 strate " is to nerve my arm. I look to you to 
 see me through." 
 
 " Through what, then ?" 
 
 "Through this most important transaction. 
 Through the speculation of which you've been 
 the barely dissimulated subject. I've brought 
 you here to receive an impression, and I've 
 brought you, even more, to make one." 
 
 The girl turned honestly flat. " But on whom ? " 
 
 " On me, to begin with by not being a fool. 
 And then, Miss, on him." 
 
 Erect, but as if paralysed, she had the air of 
 facing the worst. " On Captain Yule ? " 
 
 "By bringing him to the point." 
 
 " But, father," she asked in evident anguish 
 " to what point ? " 
 
 " The point where a gentleman has to." 
 
 Miss Prodmore faltered. " Go down on his 
 knees?" 
 
 Her father considered. "No they don't do 
 that now." 
 
 "What do they do?" 
 
 Mr. Prodmore carried his eyes with a certain 
 sustained majesty to a remote point. " He will 
 know himself."
 
 COVERING END 237 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed, he won't," the girl cried ; 
 "they don't ever!" 
 
 "Then the sooner they learn whoever teaches 
 'em ! the better : the better I mean in particu- 
 lar," Mr. Prodmore added with an intention dis- 
 cernibly vicious, "for the master of this house. 
 I'll guarantee that he shall understand that," he 
 concluded, "for I shall do my part." 
 
 She looked at him as if his part were really to 
 be hated. " But how on earth, sir, can I ever do 
 mine ? To begin with, you know, I've never even 
 seen him." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore took out his watch ; then, having 
 consulted it, put it back with a gesture that 
 seemed to dispose at the same time and in the 
 same manner of the objection. " You'll see him 
 now from one moment to the other. He's 
 remarkably handsome, remarkably young, remark- 
 ably ambitious, and remarkably clever. He has 
 one of the best and oldest names in this part of 
 the country a name that, far and wide here, 
 one could do so much with that I'm simply indig- 
 nant to see him do so little. I propose, my dear, 
 to do with it all he hasn't, and I further propose, 
 to that end, first to get hold of it. It's you, 
 Miss Prodmore, who shall take it out of the fire." 
 
 " The fire ? "he had terrible figures.
 
 238 COVERING END 
 
 " Out of the mud, if you prefer. You must 
 pick it up, do you see? My plan is, in short," 
 Mr. Prodmore pursued, "that when we've 
 brushed it off and rubbed it down a bit, blown 
 away the dust and touched up the rust, my 
 daughter shall gracefully bear it." 
 
 She could only oppose, now, a stiff, thick 
 transparency that yielded a view of the course 
 in her own veins, after all, however, mingled 
 with a feebler fluid, of the passionate blood of 
 the Prodmores. " And pray is it also Captain 
 Yule's plan?" 
 
 Her father's face warned her off the ground 
 of irony, but he replied without violence. " His 
 plans have not yet quite matured. But nothing 
 is more natural," he added with an ominous 
 smile, " than that they shall do so on the sunny 
 south wall of Miss Prodmore's best manner." 
 
 Miss Prodmore's spirit was visibly rising, 
 and a note that might have meant warning for 
 warning sounded in the laugh produced by this 
 sally. " You speak of them, papa, as if they 
 were sour little plums ! You exaggerate, I 
 think, the warmth of Miss Prodmore's nature. 
 It has always been thought remarkably cold." 
 
 " Then you'll be so good, my dear, as to con- 
 found it mightn't be amiss even a little to
 
 COVERING END 239 
 
 scandalise that opinion. I've spent twenty 
 years in giving you what your poor mother 
 used to call advantages, and they've cost me 
 hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It's now 
 time that, both as a parent and as a man of 
 business, I should get my money back. I 
 couldn't help your temper," Mr. Prodmore con- 
 ceded, " nor your taste, nor even your unfortu- 
 nate resemblance to the estimable, but far from 
 ornamental, woman who brought you forth; but 
 I paid out a small fortune that you should have, 
 damn you, don't you know? a good manner. 
 You never show it to me, certainly ; but do you 
 mean to tell me that, at this time of day for 
 other persons you haven't got one?" 
 
 This pulled our young lady perceptibly up ; 
 there was a directness in the argument that was 
 like the ache of old pinches. " If you mean by 
 ' other persons ' persons who are particularly 
 civil well, Captain Yule may not see his way 
 to be one of them. He may not think don't 
 you see ? that I've a good manner." 
 
 "Do your duty, Miss, and never mind what 
 he thinks ! " Her father's conception of her 
 duty momentarily sharpened. " Don't look at 
 him like a sick turkey, and he'll be sure to 
 think right."
 
 240 COVERING E]STD 
 
 The colour that sprang into Cora's face at 
 this rude comparison was such, unfortunately, 
 as perhaps a little to justify it. Yet she re- 
 tained, in spite of her emotion, some remnant 
 of presence of mind. "I remember your saying 
 once, some time ago, that that was just what he 
 would be sure not to do : I mean when he began 
 to go in for his dreadful ideas " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore took her boldly up. "About 
 the ' radical programme,' the ' social revolution,' 
 the spoliation of everyone, and the destruction 
 of everything? Why, you stupid thing, I've 
 worked' round to a complete agreement with 
 him. The taking from those who have by those 
 who haven't " 
 
 "Well?" said the girl, with some impatience, 
 as he sought the right way of expressing his 
 notion. 
 
 "What is it but to receive, from consenting 
 hands, the principal treasure of the rich? If 
 I'm rich, my daughter is my largest property, 
 and I freely make her over. I shall, in other 
 words, forgive my young friend his low opinions 
 if he renounces them for yew." 
 
 Cora, at this, started as with a glimpse of de- 
 light. " He won't renounce them ! He shan't ! " 
 
 Her father appeared still to enjoy the ingenious
 
 COVERING END 241 
 
 way he had put it, so that he had good humour 
 to spare. " If you suggest that you're in political 
 sympathy with him, you mean then that you'll 
 take him as he isf" 
 
 " I won't take him at all ! " she protested with 
 her head very high ; but she had no sooner 
 uttered the words than the sound of the ap- 
 proach of wheels caused her dignity to drop. 
 "A fly? it must be he/" She turned right 
 and left, for a retreat or an escape, but her father 
 had already caught her by the wrist. " Surely," 
 she pitifully panted, "you don't want me to 
 bounce on him thus?" 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, as he held her, estimated the 
 effect. "Your frock won't do with what it 
 cost me ? " 
 
 "It's not my frock, papa, it's his thinking 
 I've come here for him to see me ! " 
 
 He let her go and, as she moved away, had 
 another look for the social value of the view of 
 her stout back. It appeared to determine him, 
 for, with a touch of mercy, he passed his word. 
 " He doesn't think it, and he shan't know it." 
 
 The girl had made for the door of the morning- 
 room, before reaching which she flirted breath- 
 lessly round. "But he knows you want me to. 
 hook him ! "
 
 242 COVERING END 
 
 Mr. Prodmore was already in the parliamentary 
 attitude the occasion had suggested to him for 
 the .reception of his visitor. " The way to ' hook ' 
 him will be not to be hopelessly vulgar. He 
 doesn't know that you know anything." The 
 house-bell clinked, and he waved his companion 
 away. " Await us there with tea, and mind you 
 toe the mark ! " 
 
 Chivers, at this moment, summoned by the bell, 
 reappeared in the morning-room doorway, and 
 Cora's dismay brushed him as he sidled past her 
 and off into the passage to the front. Then, from 
 the threshold of her refuge, she launched a last 
 appeal. " Don't kill me, father : give me time ! " 
 With which she dashed into the room, closing the 
 door with a bang.
 
 II 
 
 MR. PKODMORE, in Chivers's absence, re- 
 mained staring as if at a sudden image of 
 something rather fine. His child had left with 
 him the sense of a quick irradiation, and he failed 
 to see why, at the worst, such lightnings as she 
 was thus able to dart shouldn't strike some- 
 where. If he had spoken to her of her best 
 manner perhaps that was her best manner. He 
 heard steps and voices, however, and imme- 
 diately invited to his aid his own, which was 
 simply magnificent. Chivers, returning, an- 
 nounced solemnly " Captain Yule ! " and ush- 
 ered in a tall young man in a darkish tweed 
 suit and a red necktie, attached in a sailor's 
 knot, who, as he entered, removed a soft brown 
 hat. Mr. Prodmore, at this, immediately saluted 
 him by uncovering. "Delighted at last to see 
 you here ! " 
 
 It was the young man who first, in his com- 
 parative simplicity, put out a hand. " If I've 
 243
 
 244 COVERING END 
 
 not come before, Mr. Prodmore, it was very 
 frankly speaking from the dread of seeing 
 you!" His speech contradicted, to some extent, 
 his gesture, but Clement Yule's was an aspect 
 in which contradictions were rather remarkably 
 at home. Erect and slender, but as strong as 
 he was straight, he was set up, as the phrase 
 is, like a soldier, and yet finished, in certain 
 details matters of expression and suggestion 
 only indeed like a man in whom sensibility 
 had been recklessly cultivated. He was hard 
 and fine, just as he was sharp and gentle, just 
 as he was frank and shy, just as he was serious 
 and young, just as he looked, though you could 
 never have imitated it, distinctly "kept up" 
 and yet considerably reduced. His features 
 were thoroughly regular, but his complete shav- 
 ing might have been designed to show that 
 they were, after all, not absurd. The face Mr. 
 Prodmore offered him fairly glowed, on this 
 new showing, with instant pride of possession, 
 and there was that in Captain Yule's whole air 
 which justified such a sentiment without con- 
 sciously rewarding it. 
 
 "Ah, surely," said the elder man, "my pres- 
 ence is not without a motive ! " 
 
 " It's just the motive," Captain Yule returned,
 
 COVEBING END 245 
 
 "that makes me wince at it! Certainly I've no 
 illusions," he added, "about the ground of our 
 meeting. Your thorough knowledge of what 
 you're about has placed me at your mercy - 
 you hold me in the hollow of your hand." 
 
 It was vivid in every inch that Mr. Prod- 
 more's was a nature to expand in the warmth, 
 or even in the chill, of any tribute to his finan- 
 cial subtlety. " Well, I won't, on my side, deny 
 that when, in general, I go in deep I don't go 
 in for nothing. I make it pay double ! " he 
 smiled. 
 
 "You make it pay so well 'double' surely 
 doesn't do you justice ! that, if I've under- 
 stood you, you can do quite as you like with 
 this preposterous place. Haven't you brought 
 me down exactly that I may see you do it ? " 
 
 " I've certainly brought you down that you 
 may open your eyes ! " This, apparently, how- 
 ever, was not wliat Mr. Prodmore himself had 
 arrived to do with his own. These fine points 
 of expression literally contracted with intensity. 
 " Of course, you know, you can always clear the 
 property. You can pay off the mortgages." 
 
 Captain Yule, by this time, had, as he had not 
 done at first, looked up and down, round about 
 and well over the scene, taking in, though at a
 
 246 COVERING END 
 
 mere glance, it might have seemed, more particu- 
 larly, the row, high up, of strenuous ancestors. 
 But Mr. Prodmore's last words rang none the 
 less on his ear, and he met them with mild 
 
 amusement. "Pay off ? What can I pay 
 
 off with?" 
 
 "You can always raise money." 
 
 "What can I raise it on?" 
 
 Mr. Prodmore looked massively gay. " On 
 your great political future." 
 
 "Oh, I've not taken for the short run at 
 least the lucrative line," the young man said, 
 "and I know what you think of that." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore's blandness confessed, by its 
 instant increase, to this impeachment. There 
 was always the glory of intimacy in Yule's know- 
 ing what he thought. " I hold that you keep, in 
 public, very dangerous company ; but I also hold 
 that you're extravagant mainly because you've 
 nothing at stake. A man has the right opinions," 
 he developed with pleasant confidence, "as soon 
 as he has something to lose by having the wrong. 
 Haven't I already hinted to you how to set your 
 political house in order? You drop into the 
 lower regions because you keep the best rooms 
 empty. You're a firebrand, in other words my 
 dear Captain, simply because you're a bachelor.
 
 COVERING END 247 
 
 That's one of the early complaints we all pass 
 through, but it's soon over, and the treatment for 
 it quite simple. I have your remedy." 
 
 The young man's eyes, wandering again about 
 the house, might have been those of an auditor of 
 the fiddling before the rise of the curtain. "A 
 remedy worse than the disease ? " 
 
 " There's nothing worse, that I've ever heard 
 of," Mr. Prodmore sharply replied, " than your 
 particular fix. Least of all a heap of gold " 
 
 " A heap of gold ? " His visitor idly settled, 
 as if the curtain were going up. 
 
 Mr. Prodmore raised it bravely. "In the lap 
 of a fine fresh lass ! Give pledges to fortune, as 
 somebody says then we'll talk. You want 
 money that's what you want. Well, marry it ! " 
 
 Clement Yule, for a little, never stirred, save 
 that his eyes yet again strayed vaguely. At last 
 they stopped with a smile. " Of course I could 
 do that in a moment ! " 
 
 " It's even just my own danger from you," his 
 companion returned. " I perfectly recognise that 
 any woman would now jump " 
 
 "I don't like jumping women," Captain Yule 
 threw in; "but that perhaps is a detail. It's 
 more to the point that I've yet to see the woman 
 whom, by an advance of my own "
 
 248 COVERING END 
 
 "You'd care to keep in the really attractive 
 position ?" 
 
 " Which can never, of course, be anything " 
 Yule took his friend up again " but that of 
 waiting quietly." 
 
 "Never, never anything ! " Mr. Prodmore, most 
 assentingly, banished all other thought. " But 
 I haven't asked you, you know, to make an 
 advance." 
 
 " You've only asked me to receive one ? " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore waited a little. " Well, I've 
 asked you I asked you a month ago to think 
 it all over." 
 
 "I have thought it all over," Clement Yule 
 said ; " and the strange sequel seems to be that 
 my eyes have got accustomed to my darkness. 
 I seem to make out, in the gloom of my medita- 
 tions, that, at the worst, I can let the whole thing 
 slide." 
 
 " The property ? " Mr. Prodmore jerked back 
 as if it were about to start. 
 
 "Isn't it the property," his visitor inquired, 
 " that positively throws me up ? If I can afford 
 neither to live on it nor to disencumber it, I can 
 at least let it save its own bacon and pay its own 
 debts. I can say to you simply : ' Take it, my 
 dear sir, and the devil take you!'"
 
 COVERING END 249 
 
 Mr. Prodmore gave a quick, strained smile. 
 " You wouldn't be so shockingly rude ! " 
 
 " Why not if I'm a firebrand and a keeper 
 of low company and a general nuisance? Sacri- 
 fice for sacrifice, that might very well be the 
 least ! " 
 
 This was put with such emphasis that Mr. 
 Prodmore was for a moment arrested. He could 
 stop very short, however, and yet talk as still 
 going. " How do you know, if you haven't com- 
 pared them ? It's just to make the comparison 
 in all the proper circumstances that you're here 
 at this hour." He took, with a large, though 
 vague, exhibitory gesture, a few turns about. 
 "Now that you stretch yourself for an hour's 
 relaxation and rocked, as it were, by my friendly 
 hand in the ancient cradle of your race, can 
 you seriously entertain the idea of parting with 
 such a venerable family relic ? " 
 
 It was evident that, as he decorously embraced 
 the scene, the young man, in spite of this dissua- 
 sive tone, was entertaining ideas. It might have 
 appeared at the moment to a spectator in whom 
 fancy was at all alert that the place, becoming in 
 a manner conscious of the question, felt itself on 
 its honour, and that its honour could make no 
 compromise. It met Clement Yule with no gri-
 
 250 COVERING END 
 
 mace of invitation, with no attenuation of its rich 
 old sadness. It was as if the two hard spirits, 
 the grim genius loci and the quick modern con- 
 science, stood an instant confronted. " The cradle 
 of my race bears, for me, Mr. Prodmore, a strik- 
 ing resemblance to its tomb." The sigh that 
 dropped from him, however, was not quite void 
 of tenderness. It might, for that matter, have 
 been a long, sad creak, portending collapse, 
 of some immemorial support of the Yules. 
 " Heavens, how melancholy ! " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, somewhat ambiguously, took up 
 the sound. " Melancholy ? " he just balanced. 
 That well might be, even a little should be yet 
 agreement might depreciate. 
 
 " Musty, mouldy ; " then with a poke of his 
 stick at a gap in the stuff with which an old chair 
 was covered, " mangy ! " Captain Yule responded. 
 " Is this the character throughout ? " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore fixed a minute the tell-tale 
 tatter. "You must judge for yourself you 
 must go over the house." He hesitated again; 
 then his indecision vanished the right line was 
 clear. " It does look a bit run down, but I'll tell 
 you what I'll do. I'll do it up for you neatly : 
 I'll throw that in ! " 
 
 His young friend turned on him an eye that,
 
 COVERING END 251 
 
 though, markedly enlivened by his offer, was 
 somehow only the more inscrutable. " Will you 
 put in the electric light ? " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore's own twinkle at this touch 
 of a spring he had not expected to work was, 
 on the other hand, temporarily veiled. "Well, 
 if you'll meet me half-way ! We're dealing 
 here " he backed up his gravity " with 
 fancy-values. Don't you feel," he appealed, " as 
 you take it all in, a kind of a something-or- 
 other down your back ? " 
 
 Clement Yule gazed awhile at one of the 
 pompous quarterings in the faded old glass that, 
 in tones as of late autumn, crowned with ar- 
 morial figures the top of the great hall- window; 
 then with abruptness he turned away. " Per- 
 haps I don't take it all in; but what I do feel 
 is since you mention it a sort of stiffening 
 of the spine ! The whole thing is too queer 
 too cold too cruel." 
 
 "Cruel?" Mr. Prodmore's demur was virt- 
 uous. 
 
 "Like the face of some stuck-up distant re- 
 lation who won't speak first. I see in the stare 
 of the old dragon, I taste in his very breath, all 
 the helpless mortality he has tucked away ! " 
 
 " Lord, sir you have fancies ! " Mr. Prod- 
 more was almost scandalised.
 
 252 COVERING END 
 
 But the young man's fancies only multiplied 
 as he moved, not at all critical, but altogether 
 nervous, from object to object. " I don't know 
 what's the matter but there is more here than 
 meets the eye." He tried as for his amusement 
 or his relief to figure it out. " I miss the old 
 presences. I feel the old absences. I hear the 
 old voices. I see the old ghosts." 
 
 This last was a profession that offered some 
 common ground. " The old ghosts, Captain 
 Yule," his companion promptly replied, "are 
 worth so much a dozen, and with no reduction, 
 I must remind you with the price indeed 
 rather raised for the quantity taken!" Feel- 
 ing then apparently that he had cleared the air 
 a little by this sally, Mr. Prodmore proceeded 
 to pat his interlocutor on a back that he by no 
 means wished to cause to be put to the wall. 
 "Look about you, at any rate, a little more." 
 He crossed with his toes well out the line that 
 divides encouragement from patronage. " Do 
 make yourself at home." 
 
 " Thank you very much, Mr. Prodmore. May 
 I light a cigarette ? " his visitor asked. 
 
 " In your own house, Captain ? " 
 
 " That's just the question : it seems so much 
 less my own house than before I had come into
 
 COVERING END 253 
 
 it ! " The Captain offered Mr. Prodmore a 
 cigarette which that gentleman, also taking a 
 light from him, accepted ; then he lit his own 
 and began to smoke. "As I understand you," 
 he went on, "you lump your two conditions? 
 I mean I must accept both or neither?" 
 
 Mr. Prodmore threw back his shoulders with 
 a high recognition of the long stride represented 
 by this question. "You will accept both, for, 
 by doing so, you'll clear the property at a 
 stroke. The way I put it is see? that if 
 you'll stand for Gossage, you'll get returned for 
 Gossage." 
 
 "And if I get returned for Gossage, I shall 
 marry your daughter. Accordingly," the young 
 man pursued, "if I marry your daughter " 
 
 "I'll burn up, before your eyes," said this 
 young lady's proprietor, "every scratch of your 
 pen. It will be a bonfire of signatures. There 
 won't be a penny to pay there'll only be a 
 position to take. You'll take it with peculiar 
 grace." 
 
 " Peculiar, Mr. Prodmore very ! " 
 
 The young man had assented more than he 
 desired, but he was not deterred by it from com- 
 pleting the picture. " You'll settle down here in 
 comfort and honour."
 
 254 COVERING END 
 
 Clement Yule took several steps ; the effect of 
 his host was the reverse of soothing; yet the 
 latter watched his irritation as if it were the 
 working of a charm. "Are you very sure of 
 the ' honour ' if I turn my political coat ? " 
 
 "You'll only be turning it back again to the 
 way it was always worn. Gossage will receive 
 you with open arms and press you to a heaving 
 Tory bosom. That bosom " Mr. "Prodmore fol- 
 lowed himself up "has never heaved but to 
 sound Conservative principles. The cradle, as 
 I've called it, or at least the rich, warm coverlet, 
 of your race, Gossage was the political prop- 
 erty, so to speak, of generations of your family. 
 Stand therefore in the good old interest and 
 you'll stand like a lion." 
 
 "" I'm afraid you mean," Captain Yule laughed, 
 " that I must first roar like one." 
 
 "Oh, I'll do the roaring !" and Mr. Prod- 
 more shook his mane. " Leave that to me." 
 
 "Then why the deuce don't you stand your- 
 self?" 
 
 Mr. Prodmore knew so familiarly why ! " Be- 
 cause I'm not a remarkably handsome young man 
 with the grand old home and the right old name. 
 Because I'm a different sort of matter altogether. 
 But if I haven't these advantages," he went on,
 
 COVERING END 255 
 
 "you'll do justice to my natural desire that my 
 daughter at least shall have them." 
 
 Clement Yule watched himself smoke a minute. 
 " Doing justice to natural desires is just what, of 
 late, Fve tried to make a study of. But I con- 
 fess I don't quite grasp the deep attraction you 
 appear to discover in so large a surrender of your 
 interests." 
 
 " My surrenders are my own affair," Mr. Prod- 
 more rang out, "and as for my interests, as I 
 never, on principle, give anything for nothing, I 
 dare say I may be trusted to know them when 
 I see them. You come high I don't for a 
 moment deny it ; but when I look at you, in this 
 pleasant, intimate way, my dear boy if you'll 
 allow me so to describe things I recognise one 
 of those cases, unmistakeable when really met, in 
 which one must put down one's money. There's 
 not an article in the whole shop, if you don't 
 mind the comparison, that strikes me as better 
 value. I intend you shall be, Captain," Mr. 
 Prodmore wound up in a frank, bold burst, " the 
 true comfort of my life ! " 
 
 The young man was as hushed for a little as 
 if an organ-tone were still in the air. "May I 
 inquire," he at last returned, " if Miss Prodmore's 
 ideas of comfort are as well defined and in her
 
 256 COVERING END 
 
 case, I may add, as touchingly modest as her 
 father's? Is she a responsible party of this in- 
 genious arrangement?" 
 
 Mr. Prodinore rendered homage his appre- 
 ciation was marked to the elevated character 
 of his young friend's scruple. " Miss Prodmore, 
 Captain Yule, may be perhaps best described as 
 a large smooth sheet of blank, though gilt-edged, 
 paper. No image of any tie but the true and 
 perfect filial has yet, I can answer for it, formed 
 itself on the considerable expanse. But for that 
 image to be projected " 
 
 " I've only, in person, to appear ? " Yule asked 
 with an embarrassment that he tried to laugh off. 
 
 "And, naturally, in person," Mr. Prodmore in- 
 telligently assented, "do yourself, as well as the 
 young lady, justice. Do you remember what you 
 said when I first, in London, laid the matter be- 
 fore you ? " 
 
 Clement Yule did remember, but his amusement 
 increased. " I think I said it struck me I should 
 first take a look at what do you call it? the 
 corpus delicti." 
 
 "You should first see for yourself what you 
 had really come into ? I was not only eager for 
 that," said Mr. Prodmore, " but I'm willing to go 
 further: I'm quite ready to hear you say that
 
 COVERING END 257 
 
 you think you should also first see the young 
 lady." 
 
 Captain Yule continued to laugh. "There is 
 something in that then, since you mention it ! " 
 
 "I think you'll find that there's everything." 
 Mr. Prodmore again looked at his watch. "Which 
 will you take first ? " 
 
 "First?" 
 
 " The young lady or the house ? " 
 
 His companion, at this, unmistakeably started. 
 " Do you mean your daughter's here f " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore glowed with consciousness. " In 
 the morning-room." 
 
 " Waiting for me ? " 
 
 The tone showed a consternation that Mr. Prod- 
 more's was alert to soothe. "Ah, as long, you 
 know, as you like ! " 
 
 Yule's alarm, however, was not assuaged ; it 
 appeared to grow as he stared, much discom- 
 posed, yet sharply thinking, at the door to which 
 his friend had pointed. "Oh, longer than this, 
 please ! " Then as he turned away : " Do you 
 mean she knows ? " 
 
 "That she's here on view?" Mr. Prodmore 
 hung fire a moment, but was equal to the occa- 
 sion. " She knows nothing whatever. She's as 
 unconscious as the rose on its stem ! "
 
 258 COVERING END 
 
 His companion was visibly relieved. " That's 
 right let her remain so ! I'll first take the 
 house," said Clement Yule. 
 
 "Shall I go round with you?" Mr. Prodmore 
 asked. 
 
 The young man's reflection was brief. " Thank 
 you. I'd rather, on the whole, go round alone." 
 
 The old servant who had admitted the gentle- 
 men came back at this crisis from the morning- 
 room, looking from under a bent brow and with 
 much limpid earnestness from one of them to the 
 other. The one he first addressed had evidently, 
 though quite unaware of it, inspired him with 
 a sympathy from which he now took a hint. 
 " There's tea on, sir ! " he persuasively jerked as 
 he passed the younger man. 
 
 The elder answered. "Then I'll join my 
 daughter." He gained the morning-room door, 
 whence he repeated with an appropriate gesture 
 that of offering proudly, with light, firm fin- 
 gers, a flower of his own celebrated raising 
 his happy formula of Miss Prodmore's state. 
 " The rose on its stem ! " Scattering petals, 
 diffusing fragrance, he thus passed out. 
 
 Chivers, meanwhile, had rather pointlessly 
 settled once more in its place some small object 
 that had not strayed ; to whom Clement Yule,
 
 COVERING END 259 
 
 absently watching him, abruptly broke out. " I 
 say, my friend, what colour is the rose ? " 
 
 The old man looked up with a dimness that 
 presently glimmered. "The rose, sir?" He 
 turned to the open door and the shining day. 
 "Rather a brilliant " 
 
 "A brilliant ?" Yule was interested. 
 
 "Kind of old-fashioned red." Chivers smiled 
 with the pride of being thus able to testify, but 
 the next instant his smile went out. "It's the 
 only one left on the old west wall." 
 
 His visitor's mirth, at this, quickly enough 
 revived. " My dear fellow, I'm not alluding to 
 the sole ornament of the garden, but to the 
 young lady at present in the morning-room. Do 
 you happen to have noticed if she's pretty ? " 
 
 Chivers stood queerly rueful. "Laws, sir 
 it's a matter I mostly notice ; but isn't it, at the 
 same time, sir, a matter like of taste ? " 
 
 " Pre-eminently. That's just why I appeal 
 with such confidence to yours." 
 
 The old man acknowledged with a flush of 
 real embarrassment a responsibility he had so 
 little invited. " Well, sir, mine was always 
 a sort of fancy for something more merry- 
 like." 
 
 " She isn't merry-like then, poor Miss Prod-
 
 260 COVERING END 
 
 more ? " Captain Yule's attention, however, 
 dropped before the answer came, and he turned 
 off the subject with an " Ah, if you come to that, 
 neither am I ! But it doesn't signify," he went 
 on. "What are you?" he more sociably de- 
 manded. 
 
 Chivers clearly had to think a bit. "Well, 
 sir, I'm not quite that. Whatever has there 
 been to make me, sir?" he asked in dim exten- 
 uation. 
 
 " How in the world do I know ? I mean to 
 whom do you belong ? " 
 
 Chivers seemed to scan impartially the whole 
 field. " If you could just only tell me, sir ! I 
 quite seem to waste away for someone to 
 take an order of." 
 
 Clement Yule, by this time, had become aware 
 he was amusing. " Who pays your wages ? " 
 
 " No one at all, sir," said the old man very 
 simply. 
 
 His friend, fumbling an instant in a waistcoat 
 pocket, produced something that his hand, in 
 obedience to a little peremptor} 7 " gesture and by 
 a trick of which he had unlearned, through scant 
 custom, the neatness, though the propriety was 
 instinctive, placed itself in a shy practical relation 
 to. " Then there's a sovereign. And I haven't
 
 COVERING END 261 
 
 many ! " the young man, turning away resignedly, 
 threw after it. 
 
 Chivers, for an instant, intensely studied him. 
 "Ah, then, shouldn't it stay in the family?" 
 
 Clement Yule wheeled round, first struck, then, 
 at the sight of the figure made by his companion 
 in this offer, visibly touched. " I think it does, 
 old boy." 
 
 Chivers kept his eyes on him now. "I've 
 served your house, sir." 
 
 " How long ? " 
 
 "All my life." 
 
 So, for a time, they faced each other, and some- 
 thing in Chivers made Yule at last speak. " Then 
 I won't give you up ! " 
 
 "Indeed, sir, I hope you won't give up any- 
 thing." 
 
 The Captain took up his hat. " It remains to 
 be seen." He looked over the place again; his 
 eyes wandered to the open door. " Is that the 
 garden ? " 
 
 "It was!" and the old man's sigh was like 
 the creak of the wheel of time. " Shall I show 
 you how it used to be ? " 
 
 " It's just as it z's, alas, that I happen to require 
 it ! " Captain Yule reached the door and stood 
 looking beyond. "Don't come," he then said;
 
 262 COVERING END 
 
 " I want to think." With which he walked 
 out. 
 
 Chivers, left alone, appeared to wonder at it, 
 and his wonder, like that of most old people, lay 
 near his lips. "What does he want, poor dear, 
 to think about ? " This speculation, however, 
 was immediately checked by a high, clear voice 
 that preceded the appearance on the stairs, be- 
 fore she had reached the middlemost landing, 
 of the wonderful figure of a lady, a lady who, 
 with the almost trumpeted cheer of her peremp- 
 tory but friendly call "Housekeeper, Butler, 
 old Family Servant ! " fairly waked the sleep- 
 ing echoeso Chivers gazed up at her in quick 
 remembrance, half dismayed, half dazzled, of a 
 duty neglected. She appeared now ; she shone 
 at him out of the upper dusk ; reaching the 
 middle, she had begun to descend, with beautiful 
 laughter and rustling garments ; and though she 
 was alone she gave him the sense of coming in a 
 crowd and with music. " Oh, I should have told 
 him of her!"
 
 Ill 
 
 SHE was indeed an apparition, a presence 
 requiring announcement and explanation just in 
 the degree in which it seemed to show itself in 
 a relation quite of its own to all social pre- 
 liminaries. It evidently either assumed them to 
 be already over or wished to forestall them 
 altogether ; what was clear at any rate was 
 that it allowed them scant existence. She was 
 young, tall, radiant, lovely, and dressed in a 
 manner determined at once, obviously, by the 
 fact and by the humour of her journey it 
 might have proclaimed her so a pilgrim or so 
 set her up as a priestess. Most journeys, for 
 this lady, at all events, were clearly a brush of 
 Paris. "Did you think I had got snapped 
 down in an old box like that poor girl what's 
 her name ? the one who was poking round too 
 in the celebrated poem? You dear, delightful 
 man, why didn't you tell me ? " 
 
 "Tell you, mum ?" 
 
 " Well, that you're so perfectly perfect !
 
 264 COVERING END 
 
 You're ever so much better than anyone has 
 ever said. Why, in the name of common sense, 
 has nobody ever said anything? You're every- 
 thing in the world you ought to be, and not 
 the shade of a shade of anything you oughtn't ! " 
 
 It was a higher character to be turned out 
 with than poor Chivers had ever dreamed. 
 " Well, mum, I try ! " he gaped. 
 
 " Oh, no, you don't that's just your charm ! 
 / try," cried his friend, " but you do nothing : 
 here you simply are you can't help it ! " 
 
 He stood overwhelmed. "Me, mum?" 
 
 She took him in at the eyes she could take 
 everjrthing at once. " Yes, you too, you positive 
 old picture ! I've seen the old masters but 
 you're the old master ! " 
 
 "The master I?" He fairly fell back. 
 
 " ' The good and faithful servant ' Rembrandt 
 van Rhyn : with three stars. That's what you 
 are ! " Nothing would have been more droll 
 to a spectator than her manner of meeting his 
 humbleness, or more charming indeed than the 
 practical sweetness of her want of imagination 
 of it. " The house is a vision of beauty, and 
 you're simply worthy of the house. I can't say 
 more for you ! " 
 
 "I find it a bit of a strain, mum," Chivers
 
 COVEKING END 265 
 
 candidly replied, "to keep up fairly to call it 
 with what you do say." 
 
 " That's just what everyone finds it ! " she 
 broke into the happiest laugh. " Yet I haven't 
 come here to suffer in silence, you know to 
 suffer, I mean, from envy and despair." She 
 was in constant movement, from side to side, 
 observing, comparing, returning, taking notes 
 while she gossiped and gossiping, too, for 
 remembrance. The intention of remembrance 
 even had in it, however, some prevision of fail- 
 ure or some alloy of irritation. " You're so 
 fatally right and so deadly complete, all the 
 same, that I can really scarcely bear it : with 
 every fascinating feature that I had already 
 heard of and thought I was prepared for, and 
 ever so many others that, strange to say, I 
 hadn't and wasn't, and that you just spring 
 right at me like a series of things going off. 
 What do you call it," she asked "a royal 
 salute, a hundred guns ? " 
 
 Her enthusiasm had a bewildering form, but 
 it had by this time warmed the air, and the old 
 man rubbed his hands as over a fire to which 
 the bellows had been applied. "I saw as soon 
 as you arrived, mum, that you were looking for 
 more things than ever / heard tell of I "
 
 266 COVERING END 
 
 "Oh, I had got you by heart," she returned, 
 " from books and drawings and photos ; I had 
 you in my pocket when I came : so, you see, as 
 soon as you were so good as to give me my 
 head and let me loose, I knew my way about. 
 It's all here, every inch of it," she competently 
 continued, "and now at last I can do what I 
 want ! " 
 
 A light of consternation, at this, just glim- 
 mered in Chivers's face. "And pray, mum, 
 what might that be?" 
 
 "Why, take you right back with me to 
 Missoura Top." 
 
 This answer seemed to fix his bewilderment, 
 but he was there for the general convenience. 
 
 " Do I understand you, mum, that you re- 
 quire to take me?" 
 
 Her particular convenience, on the spot, em- 
 braced him, so new and delightful a sense had 
 he suddenly read into her words. "Do you 
 mean to say you'd come as the old Family 
 Servant ? Then do, you nice real thing : it's 
 just what I'm dying for an old Family Ser- 
 vant! You're somebody's else, yes but every- 
 thing, over here, is somebody's else, and I want, 
 tod, a first-rate second-hand one, all ready made, 
 as you are, but not too much done up. You're
 
 COVEBING END 267 
 
 the best I've seen yet, and I wish I could have 
 you packed put up in paper and bran as 
 I shall have my old pot there." She whisked 
 about, remembering, recovering, eager : " Don't 
 let me forget my precious pot ! " Excited, with 
 quick transitions, she quite sociably appealed 
 to her companion, who shuffled sympathetically 
 to where, out of harm, the object had been 
 placed on a table. " Don't you just love old 
 crockery? That's awfully sweet old Chelsea." 
 
 He took up the piece with tenderness, though, 
 in his general agitation, not perhaps with all 
 the caution with which, for daily service, he 
 handled ancient frailties. He at any rate turned 
 on this fresh subject an interested, puzzled eye. 
 " Where is it I've known this very bit though 
 not to say, as you do, by name?" Suddenly 
 it came to him. "In the pew-opener's front 
 parlour ! " 
 
 "No," his interlocutress cried, "in the pew- 
 opener's best bedroom: on the old chest of 
 drawers, you know with those ducks of brass 
 handles. I've got the handles too I mean the 
 whole thing ; and the brass fender and fire- 
 irons, and the chair her grandmother died in. 
 Not in the fly," she added "it was such a 
 bore that they have to be sent."
 
 268 COVERING END 
 
 Chivers, with the pot still in his hands, fairly 
 rocked in the high wind of so much confidence 
 and such great transactions. He had nothing 
 for these, however, but approval. "You did 
 right to take this out, mum, when the fly went 
 to the stables. Them flymen do be cruel rash 
 with anything that's delicate." Of the delicacy 
 of the vessel it now rested with him to deposit 
 safely again he was by this time so apprecia- 
 tively aware that in returning with it to its 
 save niche he stumbled into some obscure trap 
 literally laid for him by his nervousness. It 
 was the matter of a few seconds, of a false 
 movement, a knock of the elbow, a gasp, a shriek, 
 a complete little crash. There was the pot on 
 the pavement, in several pieces, and the clumsy 
 cup-bearer blue with fear. " Mercy on us, mum, 
 I've brought shame on my old grey hairs ! " 
 
 The little shriek of his companion had smoth- 
 ered itself in the utterance, and the next min- 
 ute, with the ruin between them, they were 
 contrastedly face to face. The charming 
 woman, who had already found more voices in 
 the air than anyone had found before, could, 
 in the happy play of this power, find a poetry 
 in her accident. " Oh, but the way you take 
 it ! " she laughed " you're too quaint to
 
 COVERING END 269 
 
 live ! " She looked at him as if he alone had 
 suffered as if his suffering indeed positively 
 added to his charm. "The way you said that 
 now it's just the very type ' ! That's all I 
 want of you now to be the very type. It's 
 what you are, you poor dear thing for you 
 can't help it; and it's what everything and 
 everyone else is, over here ; so that you had 
 just better all make up your minds to it and 
 not try to shirk it. There was a type in the 
 train with me the 'awfully nice girl' of all 
 the English novels, the 'simple maiden in her 
 flower' of who is it? your great poet. She 
 couldn't help it either in fact I wouldn't have 
 let her!" With this, while Chivers picked up 
 his fragments, his lady had a happy recall. His 
 face, as he stood there with the shapeless ele- 
 ments of his humiliation fairly rattling again 
 in his hands, was a reflection of her extraor- 
 dinary manner of enlarging the subject, or 
 rather, more beneficently perhaps, the space that 
 contained it. "By the way, the girl was com- 
 ing right here. Has she come ? " 
 
 Chivers crept solemnly away, as if to bury 
 his dead, which he consigned, with dumb rites, 
 to a situation of honourable publicity ; then, as 
 he came back, he replied without elation : " Miss
 
 270 COVERING END 
 
 Prodmore is here, mum. She's having her 
 tea." 
 
 This, for his friend, was a confirmatory touch 
 to be fitted with eagerness into the picture. 
 "Yes, that's exactly it they're always having 
 their tea ! " 
 
 " With Mr. Prodmore in the morning-room," 
 the old man supplemented. "Captain Yule's in 
 the garden." 
 
 "Captain Yule?" 
 
 "The new master. He's also just arrived." 
 
 The wonderful lady gave an immediate " Oh ! " 
 to the effect of which her silence for another mo- 
 ment seemed to add. " She didn't tell me about 
 Atw." 
 
 "Well, mum," said Chivers, "it do be a 
 strange thing to tell. He had never like, 
 mum so much as seen the place." 
 
 " Before today his very own ? " This too, 
 for the visitor, was an impression among im- 
 pressions, and, like most of her others, it ended 
 after an instant as a laugh. "Well, I hope he 
 likes it ! " 
 
 "I haven't seen many, mum," Chivers boldly 
 declared, "that like it as much as you." 
 
 She made with her handsome head a motion 
 that appeared to signify still deeper things than
 
 COVERING END 271 
 
 he had caught. Her beautiful wondering eyes 
 played high and low, like the flight of an im- 
 prisoned swallow, then, as she sank upon a seat, 
 dropped at last as if the creature were bruised 
 with its limits. "I should like it still better if 
 it were my very own ! " 
 
 " Well, mum," Chivers sighed, " if it wasn't 
 against my duty I could wish indeed it were ! 
 But the Captain, mum," he conscientiously added, 
 "is the lawful heir." 
 
 It was a wonder what she found in whatever 
 he said ; he touched with every word the spring 
 of her friendly joy. " That's another of your 
 lovely old things I adore your lawful heirs ! " 
 She appeared to have, about everything that 
 came up, a general lucid vision that almost glori- 
 fied the particular case. " He has come to take 
 possession ? " 
 
 Chivers accepted, for the credit of the house, 
 this sustaining suggestion. " He's a-taking of it 
 now." 
 
 This evoked, for his companion, an instantane- 
 ous show. " What does he do and how does he 
 do it? Can't I see?" She was all impatience, 
 but she dropped to disappointment as her guide 
 looked blank. " There's no grand fuss ? " 
 
 " I scarce think him, mum," Chivers with pro-
 
 272 COVERING END 
 
 priety hastened to respond, "the gentleman to 
 make any about anything." 
 
 She had to resign herself, but she smiled as she 
 thought. " Well, perhaps I like them better 
 when they don't ! " She had clearly a great 
 range of taste, and it all came out in the wistful- 
 ness with which, before the notice apparently 
 served on her, she prepared to make way. " I 
 also" she lingered and sighed "have taken 
 possession ! " 
 
 Poor Chivers really rose to her. " It was you, 
 mum," he smiled, " took it first ! " 
 
 She sadly shook her head. "Ah, but for a 
 poor little hour ! He's for life." 
 
 The old man gave up, after a little, with equal 
 depression, the pretence of dealing with such 
 realities. " For mine, mum, I do at least hope." 
 
 She made again the circuit of the great place, 
 picking up without interest the jacket she had on 
 her previous entrance laid down. " I shall think 
 of you, you know, here together." She vaguely 
 looked about her as for anything else to take ; 
 then abruptly, with her eyes again on Chivers : 
 " Do you suppose he'll be kind to you ? " 
 
 His hand, in his trousers -pocket, seemed to 
 turn the matter over. " He has already been, 
 mum."
 
 COVERING END 273 
 
 " Then be sure to be so to him ! " she replied 
 with some emphasis. The house-bell sounded as 
 she spoke, giving her quickly another thought. 
 "Is that his bell?" 
 
 drivers was hardly less struck. "I must see 
 whose ! " and hurrying, on this, to the front, 
 he presently again vanished. 
 
 His companion, left alone, stood a minute with 
 an air in which happy possession was oddly and 
 charmingly mingled with desperate surrender ; 
 so much as to have left you in doubt if the next 
 of her lively motions were curiosity or disgust. 
 Impressed, in her divided state, with a small 
 framed plaque of enamel, she impulsively de- 
 tached it from the wall and examined it with 
 hungry tenderness. Her hovering thought was 
 so vivid that you might almost have traced it in 
 sound. " Why, bless me if it isn't Limoges ! I 
 wish awfully I were a lad woman : then, I do 
 devoutly hope, I'd just quietly take it ! " It 
 testified to the force of this temptation that 
 on hearing a sound behind her she started like 
 a guilty thing ; recovering herself, however, and 
 just, of course, not to appear at fault keep- 
 ing the object familiarly in her hand as she 
 jumped to a recognition of the gentleman who, 
 coming in from the garden, had stopped in
 
 274 COVBEING END 
 
 the open doorway. She gathered indeed from 
 his being there a positive advantage, the full con- 
 fidence of which was already in her charming 
 tone. " Oh, Captain Yule, I'm delighted to meet 
 you ! It's such a comfort to ask you if I may ! " 
 
 His surprise kept him an instant dumb, but 
 the effort not too closely to betray it appeared 
 in his persuasive inflection. "If you 'may,' 
 madam ?" 
 
 "Why, just be here, don't you know? and 
 poke round ! " She presented such a course as 
 almost vulgarly natural. "Don't tell me I can't 
 now, because I already have : I've been upstairs 
 and downstairs and in my lady's chamber I 
 won't answer for it even perhaps that I've not 
 been in my lord's ! I got round your lovely 
 servant if you don't look out I'll grab him. 
 If you don't look out, you know, I'll grab every- 
 thing." She gave fair notice and went on with 
 amazing serenity ; she gathered positive gaiety 
 from his frank stupefaction. "That's what I 
 came over for just to lay your country waste. 
 Your house is a wild old dream ; and besides " 
 she dropped, oddly and quaintly, into real 
 responsible judgment "you've got some quite 
 good things. Oh, yes, you have several : don't 
 coyly pretend you haven't ! " Her familiarity
 
 COVERING END 275 
 
 took these flying leaps, and she alighted, as her 
 victim must have phrased it to himself, without 
 turning a hair. "Don't you know you have? 
 Just look at that ! " She thrust her enamel be- 
 fore him, but he took it and held it so blankly, 
 with an attention so absorbed in the mere woman, 
 that at the sight of his manner her zeal for his 
 interest and her pity for his detachment again 
 flashed out. "Don't you know anything? Why, 
 it's Limoges ! " 
 
 Clement Yule simply broke into a laugh 
 though his laugh indeed was comprehensive. 
 "It seems absurd, but I'm not in the least ac- 
 quainted with my house. I've never happened 
 to see it." 
 
 She seized his arm. "Then do let me show 
 it to you ! " 
 
 "I shall be delighted." His laughter had 
 redoubled in a way that spoke of his previous 
 tension; yet his tone, as he saw Chivers return 
 breathless from the front, showed that he had 
 responded sincerely enough to desire a clear 
 field. "Who in the world's there?" 
 
 The old man was full of it. " A party ! " 
 
 " A party ? " 
 
 Chivers confessed to the worst. "Over from 
 Gossage to see the house."
 
 276 COVERING END 
 
 The worst, however, clearly, was quite good 
 enough for their companion, who embraced the 
 incident with sudden enthusiasm. "Oh, let me 
 show it ! " But before either of the men could 
 reply she had, addressing herself to Chivers, one 
 of those droll drops that betrayed the quickness 
 of her wit and the freedom of her fancy. " Dear 
 me, I forgot you get the tips ! But, you dear 
 old creature," she went on, " I'll get them, too, 
 and I'll simply make them over to you." She 
 again pressed Yule pressed him into this ser- 
 vice. " Perhaps they'll be bigger for me ! " 
 
 He continued to be highly amused. "I 
 should think they'd be enormous for you! 
 But I should like," he added with more concen- 
 tration "I should like extremely, you know," 
 to go over with you alone." 
 
 She was held a moment. "Just you and me ? " 
 
 "Just you and me as you kindly proposed." 
 
 She stood reminded ; but, throwing it off, she 
 had her first inconsequence. " That must be for 
 after !" 
 
 " Ah, but not too late." He looked at his 
 watch. "I go back tonight." 
 
 " Laws, sir ! " Chivers irrepressibly groaned. 
 
 " You want to keep him ? " the stranger asked. 
 Captain Yule turned away at the question, but
 
 COVERING END 277 
 
 her look went after him, and she found herself, 
 somehow, instantly answered. "Then I'll help 
 you," she said to Chivers ; " and the oftener we 
 go over the better." 
 
 Something further, on this, quite immaterial, 
 but quite adequate, passed, while the young 
 man's back was turned, between the two others ; 
 in consequence of which Chivers again appealed 
 to his master. " Shall I show them straight in, sir ? " 
 
 His master, still detached, replied without 
 looking at him. "By all means if there's 
 money in it ! " This was jocose, but there would 
 have been, for an observer, an increase of hope 
 in the old man's departing step. The lady had 
 exerted an influence. 
 
 She continued, for that matter, with a start 
 of genial remembrance, to exert one in his ab- 
 sence. " Oh, and I promised to show it to Miss 
 Prodmore! " Her conscience, with a kind smile 
 for the young person she named, put the ques- 
 tion to Clement Yule. " Won't you call her ? " 
 
 The coldness of his quick response made it 
 practically none. " ' Call ' her ? Dear lady, I 
 don't know her ! " 
 
 " You must, then she's wonderful. " The 
 face with which he met this drew from the dear 
 lady a sharper look ; but, for the aid of her good-
 
 278 COVERING END 
 
 nature, Cora Prodmore, at the moment she spoke, 
 presented herself in the doorway of the morning- 
 room. " See ? She's charming ! " The girl, with 
 a glare of recognition, dashed across the open as 
 if under heavy fire ; but heavy fire, alas the 
 extremity of exposure was promptly embodied 
 in her friend's public embrace. "Miss Prod- 
 more," said this terrible friend, "let me present 
 Captain Yule." Never had so great a gulf been 
 bridged in so free a span. " Captain Yule, Miss 
 Prodmore. Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule." 
 
 There was stiffness, the cold mask of terror, 
 in such notice as either party took of this dem- 
 onstration, the convenience of which was not 
 enhanced for the divided pair by the perception 
 that Mr. Prodmore had now followed his daugh- 
 ter. Cora threw herself confusedly into it in- 
 deed, as with a vain rebound into the open. 
 " Papa, let me ' present ' you to Mrs. Gracedew. 
 Mrs. Gracedew, Mr. Prodmore. Mr. Prodmore, 
 Mrs. Gracedew." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, with a free salute and a dis- 
 tinct repetition, took in Mr. Prodmore as she had 
 taken everything else. " Mr. Prodmore " oh, 
 she pronounced him, spared him nothing of him- 
 self. " So happy to meet your daughter's father. 
 Your daughter's so perfect a specimen."
 
 COVERING END 279 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, for the first moment, had simply 
 looked large and at sea ; then, like a practical man 
 and without more question, had quickly seized the 
 long perch held out to him in this statement. 
 " So perfect a specimen, yes ! " he seemed to 
 pass it on to his young friend. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, if she observed his emphasis, 
 drew from it no deterrence ; she only continued 
 to cover Cora with a gaze that kept her well in 
 the middle. " So fresh, so quaint, so droll ! " 
 
 It was apparently a result of what had passed 
 in the morning-room that Mr. Prodmore had 
 grasped afresh the need for effective action, which 
 he clearly felt he did something to meet in clutch- 
 ing precipitately the helping hand popped so sud- 
 denly out of space, yet so beautifully gloved and so 
 pressingly and gracefully brandished. " So fresh, 
 so quaint, so droll ! " he again gave Captain 
 Yule the advantage of the stranger's impression. 
 
 To what further appreciation this might have 
 prompted the lady herself was not, however, just 
 then manifest ; for the return of Chivers had been 
 almost simultaneous with the advance of the 
 Prodmores, and it had taken place with forms that 
 made it something of a circumstance. There was 
 positive pomp in the way he preceded several per- 
 sons of both sexes, not tourists at large, but simple
 
 280 COVERING END 
 
 sightseers of the half -holiday order, plain provin- 
 cial folk already, on the spot, rather awestruck. 
 The old man, with suppressed pulls and prayers, 
 had drawn them up in a broken line, and the habit 
 of more peopled years, the dull drone of the dead 
 lesson, sounded out in his prompt beginning. The 
 party stood close, in this manner, on one side of 
 the apartment, while the master of the house and 
 his little circle were grouped on the other. But 
 as Chivers, guiding his squad, reached the centre 
 of the space, Mrs. Gracedew, markedly moved, 
 quite unreservedly engaged, came slowly forward 
 to meet him. " This, ladies and gentlemen," he 
 mechanically quavered, "is perhaps the most 
 important feature the grand old feudal, baronial 
 'all. Being, from all accounts, the most ancient 
 portion of the edifice, it was erected in the very 
 earliest ages." He paused a moment, to mark his 
 effect, then gave a little cough which had become, 
 obviously, in these great reaches of time, an 
 essential part of the trick. " Some do say," he 
 dispassionately remarked, " in the course of the 
 fifteenth century." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, who had visibly thrown herself 
 into the working of the charm, following him with 
 vivid sympathy and hanging on his lips, took the 
 liberty, at this, of quite affectionately pouncing on
 
 COVERING END 281 
 
 him. " /say in the fourteenth, my dear you're 
 robbing us of a hundred years ! " 
 
 Her victim yielded without a struggle. " I do 
 seem, in them dark old centuries, sometimes to 
 trip a little." Yet the interruption of his ancient 
 order distinctly discomposed him, all the more that 
 his audience, gaping with a sense of the importance 
 of the fine point, moved in its mass a little nearer. 
 Thus put upon his honour, he endeavoured to 
 address the group with a dignity undiminished. 
 " The Gothic roof is much admired, but the west 
 gallery is a modern addition." 
 
 His discriminations had the note of culture, but 
 his candour, all too promptly, struck Mrs. Grace- 
 dew as excessive. " What in the name of Methu- 
 selah do you call ' modern ' ? It was here at the 
 visit of James the First, in 1611, and is supposed 
 to have served, in the charming detail of its orna- 
 ment, as a model for several that were constructed 
 in his reign. The great fireplace," she handsomely 
 conceded, " is Jacobean." 
 
 She had taken him up with such wondrous 
 benignant authority as if, for her life, if they 
 were to have it, she couldn't help taking care 
 that they had it out ; she had interposed with 
 an assurance that so converted her as by the 
 wave of a great wand, the motion of one of her
 
 282 COVERING END 
 
 own free arms from mere passive alien to 
 domesticated dragon, that poor Chivers could 
 only assent with grateful obeisances. She so 
 plunged into the old book that he had quite 
 lost his place. The two gentlemen and the 
 young lady, moreover, were held there by the 
 magic of her manner. His own, as he turned 
 again to his cluster of sightseers, took refuge 
 in its last refinement. "The tapestry on the 
 left Italian the elegant wood- work Flemish." 
 Mrs. Gracedew was upon him again. "Ex- 
 cuse me if I just deprecate a misconception. 
 The elegant wood- work Italian the tapestry 
 on the left Flemish." Suddenly she put it to 
 him before them all, pleading as familiarly and 
 gaily as she had done when alone with him, and 
 looking now at the others, all round, gentry 
 and poor folk alike, for sympathy and support. 
 She had an idea that made her dance. " Do 
 you really mind if / just do it? Oh, I know 
 how : I can do quite beautifully the house- 
 keeper last week at Castle Gaunt." She frater- 
 nised with the company as if it were a game 
 they must play with her, though this first stage 
 sufficiently hushed them. "How do you do? 
 Ain't it thrilling ? " Then with a laugh as free 
 as if, for a disguise, she had thrown her hand-
 
 COVEKING END 283 
 
 kerchief over her head or made an apron of 
 her tucked-up skirt, she passed to the grand 
 manner. "Keep well together, please we're 
 not doing puss-in-the-corner. I've my duty to 
 all parties I can't be partial to one ! " 
 
 The contingent from Gossage had, after all, 
 like most contingents, its spokesman a very 
 erect little personage in a very new suit and a 
 very green necktie, with a very long face and 
 upstanding hair. It was on an evident sense 
 of having been practically selected for encour- 
 agement that he, in turn, made choice of a 
 question which drew all eyes. " How many 
 parties, now, can you manage ? " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was superbly definite. " Two. 
 The party up and the party down." Chivers 
 gasped at the way she dealt with this liberty, 
 and his impression was conspicuously deepened 
 as she pointed to one of the escutcheons in the 
 high hall-window. " Observe in the centre com- 
 partment the family arms." She did take his 
 breath away, for before he knew it she had 
 crossed with the lightest but surest of gestures 
 to the black old portrait, on the opposite wall, 
 of a long-limbed gentleman in white trunk- 
 hose. " And observe the family legs ! " Her 
 method was wholly her own, irregular and
 
 284 COVERING END 
 
 broad ; she flew, familiarly, from the pavement 
 to the roof and then dropped from the roof to 
 the pavement as if the whole air of the place 
 were an element in which she floated. " Observe 
 the suit of armour worn at Tewkesbury ob- 
 serve the tattered banner carried at Blenheim." 
 They bobbed their heads wherever she pointed, 
 but it would have come home to any spectator 
 that they saw her alone. This was the case 
 quite as much with the opposite trio the case 
 especially with Clement Yule, who indeed made 
 no pretence of keeping up with her signs. It 
 was the signs themselves he looked at not at 
 the subjects indicated. But he never took his 
 eyes from her, and it was as if, at last, she had 
 been peculiarly affected by a glimpse of his atten- 
 tion. All her own, for a moment, frankly went 
 back to him and was immediately determined by 
 it. " Observe, above all, that you're in one of 
 the most interesting old houses, of its type, in 
 England; for which the ages have been tender 
 and the generations wise : letting it change so 
 slowly that there's always more left than taken 
 living their lives in it, but letting it shape 
 their lives ! " 
 
 Though this pretty speech had been unmistake- 
 ably addressed to the younger of the temporary
 
 COVERING END 285 
 
 occupants of Covering End, it was the elder who, 
 on the spot, took it up. "A most striking and 
 appropriate tribute to a real historical monu- 
 ment ! " Mr. Prodmore had a natural ease that 
 could deal handsomely with compliments, and 
 he manifestly, moreover, like a clever man, saw 
 even more in such an explosion of them than 
 fully met the ear. " You do, madam, bring the 
 whole thing out ! " 
 
 The visitor who had already with such impu- 
 nity ventured had, on this, a loud renewal of bold- 
 ness, but for the benefit of a near neighbour. 
 " Doesn't she indeed, Jane, bring it out ? " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, with a friendly laugh, caught 
 the words in their passage. "But who in the 
 world wants to keep it in? It isn't a secret 
 it isn't a strange cat or a political party ! " The 
 housekeeper, as she talked, had already dropped 
 from her; her sense of the place was too fresh 
 for control, though instead of half an hour it 
 might have taken six months to become so fond. 
 She soared again, at random, to the noble spring 
 of the roof. Just look at those lovely lines ! " 
 They all looked, all but Clement Yule, and 
 several of the larger company, subdued, over- 
 whelmed, nudged each other with strange sounds. 
 Wherever she turned Mrs. Gracedew appeared
 
 286 COVERING END 
 
 to find a pretext for breaking out. "Just look 
 at the tone of that glass, and the gilding of that 
 leather, and the cutting of that oak, and the 
 dear old flags of the very floor." It came back, 
 came back easily, her impulse to appeal to the 
 lawful heir, and she seemed, with her smile of 
 universal intelligence, just to demand the charity 
 of another moment for it. " To look, in this 
 place, is to love ! " 
 
 A voice from the party she had in hand took 
 it up with an artless guffaw that resounded 
 more than had doubtless been meant and that, 
 at any rate, was evidently the accompaniment 
 of some private pinch applied to one of the ladies. 
 " I say to love ! " 
 
 It was one of the ladies who very properly 
 replied. " It depends on who you look at ! " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, in the geniality of the hour, 
 made his profit of the simple joke. " Do you 
 hear that, Captain? You must look at the right 
 person ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew certainly had not been looking 
 at the wrong one. " I don't think Captain Yule 
 cares. He doesn't do justice ! " 
 
 Though her face was still gay, she had faltered, 
 which seemed to strike the young man even more 
 than if she had gone on. " To what, madam ? "
 
 COVEEING END 287 
 
 Well, on the chance she let him have it. " To 
 the value of your house." 
 
 He took it beautifully. " I like to hear you 
 express it ! " 
 
 " J can't express it ! " She once more looked 
 all round, and so much more gravely than she had 
 yet done that she might have appeared in trouble. 
 She tried but, with a sigh, broke down. " It's too 
 inexpressible ! " 
 
 This was a view of the case to which Mr. Prod- 
 more, for his own reasons, was not prepared to 
 assent. Expression and formulation were what 
 he naturally most desired, and he had just en- 
 countered a fountain of these things that he 
 couldn't prematurely suffer to fail him. "Do 
 what you can for it, madam. It would bring it 
 quite home." 
 
 Thus excited, she gave with sudden sombre 
 clearness another try. "Well the value's a 
 fancy value I " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, receiving it as more than he 
 could have hoped, turned triumphant to his young 
 friend. " Exactly what I told you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew explained indeed as if Mr. Prod- 
 more's triumph was not perhaps exactly what she 
 had argued for. Still, the truth was too great. 
 "When a thing's unique, it's unique ! "
 
 288 COVERING END 
 
 That was every bit Mr. Prodmore required. 
 "It's unique!" 
 
 This met, moreover, the perception of the gen- 
 tleman in the green necktie. " It's unique ! " 
 They all, in fact, demonstratively almost vocif- 
 erously now caught the point. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, finding herself so sustained, 
 and still with her eyes on the lawful heirs, put it 
 yet more strongly. "It's worth anything you 
 like." 
 
 What was this but precisely what Mr. Prod- 
 more had always striven to prove ? " Anything 
 you like ! " he richly reverberated. 
 
 The pleasant discussion and the general inter- 
 est seemed to bring them all together. " Twenty 
 thousand now ? " one of the gentlemen from Gos- 
 sage archly inquired a very young gentleman 
 with an almost coaxing voice, who blushed im- 
 mensely as soon as he had spoken. 
 
 He blushed still more at the way Mrs. Grace- 
 dew faced him. " I wouldn't look at twenty 
 thousand ! " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, on the other hand, was propor- 
 tionately uplifted. " She wouldn't look at twenty 
 thousand ! " he announced with intensity to the 
 Captain. 
 
 The visitor who had been the first to speak
 
 COVERING END 289 
 
 gave a shrewder guess. " Thirty, then, as it 
 stands ? " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked more and more respon- 
 sible ; she communed afresh with the place ; but 
 she too evidently had her conscience. " It would 
 be giving it away ! " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, at this, could scarcely contain 
 himself. " It would be giving it away ! " 
 
 The second speaker had meanwhile conceived 
 the design of showing that, though still crim- 
 son, he was not ashamed. " You'd hold out for 
 forty ?" 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew required a minute to answer 
 a very marked minute during which the whole 
 place, pale old portraits and lurking old echoes 
 and all, might have made you feel how much 
 depended on her ; to the degree that the con- 
 sciousness in her face became finally a reason for 
 her not turning it to Gossage. " Fifty thousand, 
 Captain Yule, is what I think I should propose." 
 
 If the place had seemed to listen it might 
 have been the place that, in admiring accents 
 from the gentleman with the green tie, took up 
 the prodigious figure. "Fifty thousand pound ! " 
 
 It was echoed in a high note from the lady 
 he had previously addressed. " Fifty thousand ! " 
 
 Yet it was Mr. Prodmore who caught it up
 
 290 COVERING END 
 
 loudest and appeared to make it go furthest. 
 " Fifty thousand fifty thousand ! " Mrs. Grace- 
 dew had put him in such spirits that he found 
 on the spot, indicating to her his young friend, 
 both the proper humour and the proper rigour 
 for any question of what anyone might "pro- 
 pose." "He'll never part with the dear old 
 home ! " 
 
 . Mrs. Gracedew could match at least the con- 
 fidence. " Then I'll go over it again while I 
 have the chance." Her own humour enjoined 
 that she should drop into the housekeeper, in 
 the perfect tone of which character she addressed 
 herself once more to the party. " We now pass 
 to the grand staircase." She gathered her band 
 with a brave gesture, but before she had fairly 
 impelled them to the ascent she heard herself 
 rather sharply challenged by Captain Yule, who, 
 during the previous scene, had uttered no sound, 
 yet had remained as attentive as he was impene- 
 trable. " Please let them pass without you ! " 
 
 She was taken by surprise. "And stay here 
 with you?" 
 
 "If you'll be so good. I want to speak to 
 you." Turning then to Chivers and frowning 
 on the party, he delivered himself for the first 
 time as a person in a position. "For God's 
 sake, remove them ! "
 
 COVERING END 291 
 
 The old man, at this blast of impatience, in- 
 stantly fluttered forward. "We now pass to 
 the grand staircase." 
 
 They all passed, Chivers covering their scat- 
 tered ascent as a shepherd scales a hillside with 
 his flock; but it became evident during the 
 manoauvre that Cora Prodmore was quite out 
 of tune. She had been standing beyond and 
 rather behind Captain Yule ; but she now moved 
 quickly round and reached her new friend's right. 
 " Mrs. Gracedew, may / speak to you ? " 
 
 Her father, before the reply could come, had 
 taken up the place. ''After Captain Yule, my 
 dear." He was in a state of positively polished 
 lucidity. " You must make the most don't 
 you see ? of the opportunity of the others ! " 
 
 He waved her to the staircase as one who 
 knew what he was about, but, while the young 
 man, turning his back, moved consciously and 
 nervously away, the girl renewed her effort to 
 provoke Mrs. Gracedew to detain her. It hap- 
 pened, to her sorrow, that this lady appeared 
 for the moment, to the detriment of any free 
 attention, to be absorbed in Captain Yule's man- 
 ner ; so that Cora could scarce disengage her 
 without some air of invidious reference to it. 
 Recognising as much, she could only for two
 
 292 COVERING END 
 
 seconds, but with great yearning, parry her own 
 antagonist. " She'll help me, I think, papa ! " 
 
 " That's exactly what strikes me, love ! " he 
 cheerfully replied. " But Til help you too ! " 
 He gave her, toward the stairs, a push propor- 
 tioned both to his authority and to her weight ; 
 and while she reluctantly climbed in the wake of 
 the visitors, he laid on Mrs. Gracedew's arm, with 
 a portentous glance at Captain Yule, a hand of 
 commanding significance. " Just pile it on ! " 
 
 Her attention came back she seemed to see. 
 " He doesn't like it ? " 
 
 "Not half enough. Bring him round." 
 
 Her eyes rested again on their companion, who 
 had fidgeted further away and who now, with 
 his hands in his pockets and unaware of this 
 private passage, stood again in the open door- 
 way and gazed into the grey court. Something 
 in the sight determined her. "I'll bring him 
 round." 
 
 But at this moment Cora, pausing half-way up, 
 sent down another entreaty. " Mrs. Gracedew, 
 will you see me ? " 
 
 The charming woman looked at her watch. 
 " In ten minutes," she smiled back. 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, bland and assured, looked at his 
 own. " You could put him through in five but
 
 COVERING END 293 
 
 I'll allow you twenty. There ! " he decisively 
 cried to his daughter, whom he quickly rejoined 
 and hustled on her course. Mrs. Gracedew 
 kissed after her a hand of vague comfort.
 
 IV 
 
 THE silence that reigned between the pair 
 might have been registered as embarrassing had 
 it lasted a trifle longer. Yule had continued to 
 turn his back, but he faced about, though he was 
 distinctly grave, in time to avert an awkward- 
 ness. " How do you come to know so much about 
 my house ? " 
 
 She was as distinctly not grave. "How do 
 you come to know so little ? " 
 
 " It's not my fault," he said very gently. " A 
 particular combination of misfortunes has forbid- 
 den me, till this hour, to come within a mile of 
 it." 
 
 These words evidently struck her as so ex- 
 actly the right ones to proceed from the lawful 
 heir that such a felicity of misery could only 
 quicken her interest. He was plainly as good in 
 his way as the old butler the particular combi- 
 nation of misfortunes corresponded to the life- 
 long service. Her interest, none the less, in its 
 294
 
 COVERING END 295 
 
 turn, could only quicken her pity, and all her 
 emotions, we have already seen, found prompt 
 enough expression. What could any expression 
 do indeed now but mark the romantic reality ? 
 " Why, you poor thing ! " she came toward 
 him on the weary road. "Now that you've got 
 here I hope at least you'll stay." Their inter- 
 course must pitch itself so far as she was 
 concerned in some key that would make up 
 for things. " Do make yourself comfortable. 
 Don't mind me." 
 
 Yule looked a shade less serious. " That's 
 exactly what I wanted to say to you!" 
 
 She was struck with the way it came in. 
 " Well, if you had been haughty, I shouldn't 
 have been quite crushed, should I ? " 
 
 The young man's gravity, at this, completely 
 yielded. " I'm never haughty oh, no ! " 
 
 She seemed even more amused. " Fortunately 
 then, as I'm never crushed. I don't think," 
 she added, "that I'm really as crushable as you." 
 
 The smile with which he received this failed 
 to conceal completely that it was something of 
 a home thrust. " Aren't we really all crushable 
 by the right thing?" 
 
 She considered a little. " Don't you mean 
 rather by the wrong ? "
 
 296 COVERING END 
 
 He had got, clearly, a trifle more accustomed 
 to her being extraordinary. "Are you sure we 
 always know them apart ? " 
 
 She weighed the responsibility. "I always 
 do. Don't you?" 
 
 " Not quite every time ! " 
 
 "Oh," she replied, "I don't think, thank 
 goodness, we have positively ' every time ' to dis- 
 tinguish." 
 
 "Yet we must always act," he objected. 
 
 She turned this over; then with her wonder- 
 ful living look, "I'm glad to hear it," she ex- 
 claimed, "because, I fear, I always do! You'll 
 certainly think," she added with more gravity, 
 that I've taken a line today ! " 
 
 " Do you mean that of mistress of the house ? 
 Yes you do seem in possession!" 
 
 " You don't ! " she honestly answered ; after 
 which, as to attenuate a little the rigour of the 
 charge: "You don't comfortably look it, I 
 mean. You don't look" she was very serious 
 "as I want you to." 
 
 It was when she was most serious that she 
 was funniest. " How do you ' want ' me to 
 look?" 
 
 She endeavoured, while he watched her, to 
 make up her mind, but seemed only, after an
 
 COVERING END 297 
 
 instant, to recognise a difficulty. "When you 
 look at me, you're all right ! " she sighed. It 
 was an obstacle to her lesson, and she cast her 
 eyes about. "Look at that chimneypiece." 
 
 "Well ?" he inquired as his eyes came 
 
 back from it. 
 
 "You mean to say it isn't lovely?" 
 
 He returned to it without passion gave a 
 vivid sign of mere disability. " I'm sure I 
 don't know. I don't mean to say anything. 
 I'm a rank outsider." 
 
 It had an instant effect on her she almost 
 pounced upon him. " Then you must let me 
 put you up ! " 
 
 "Up to what?" 
 
 " Up to everything ! " his levity added to 
 her earnestness. "You were smoking when 
 you came in," she said as she glanced about. 
 "Where's your cigarette?" 
 
 The young man appreciatively produced an- 
 other. "I thought perhaps I mightn't here." 
 
 "You may everywhere." 
 
 He bent his head to the information. " Every- 
 where." 
 
 She laughed at his docility, yet could only 
 wish to presume upon it. "It's a rule of the 
 house ! "
 
 298 COVERING END 
 
 He took in the place with greater pleasure. 
 What delightful rules ! " 
 
 " How could such a house have any others ? " 
 she was already launched again in her brave 
 relation to it. " I may go up just once more 
 mayn't I to the long gallery ? " 
 
 How could he tell? "The long gallery?" 
 
 With an added glow she remembered. "I 
 forgot you've never seen it. Why, it's the lead- 
 ing thing about you ! " She was full, on the 
 spot, of the pride of showing it. " Come 
 right up ! " 
 
 Clement Yule, half seated on a table from 
 which his long left leg nervously swung, only 
 looked at her and smiled and smoked. " There's 
 a party up." 
 
 She remembered afresh. " So we must be the 
 party down ? Well, you must give me a chance. 
 That long gallery's the principal thing I came 
 over for." 
 
 She was strangest of all when she explained. 
 "Where in heaven's name did you come over 
 from?" 
 
 "Missoura Top, where I'm building just in 
 this style. I came for plans and ideas," Mrs. 
 Gracedew serenely pursued. "I felt I must look 
 right at you."
 
 COVERING END 299 
 
 "But what did you know about us?" 
 
 She kept it a moment as if it were too good 
 to give him all at once. " Everything ! " 
 
 He seemed indeed almost afraid to touch it. 
 "At 'Missoura Top'?" 
 
 "Why not? It's a growing place forty 
 thousand the last census." She hesitated; then 
 as if her warrant should be slightly more per- 
 sonal: "My husband left it to me." 
 
 The young man presently changed his posture. 
 "You're a widow?" 
 
 Nothing was wanting to the simplicity of her 
 quiet assent. " A very lone woman." Her face, 
 for a moment, had the vision of a long distance. 
 "My loneliness is great enough to want some- 
 thing big to hold it and my taste good enough 
 to want something beautiful. You see, I had 
 your picture." 
 
 Yule's innocence made a movement. " Mine ? " 
 
 Her smile reassured him; she nodded toward 
 the main entrance. " A water colour I chanced 
 on in Boston." 
 
 "In Boston?" 
 
 She stared. "Haven't you heard of Boston 
 either?" 
 
 "Yes but what has Boston heard of me?" 
 
 " It wasn't ' you,' unfortunately it was your
 
 300 COVERING END 
 
 divine south front. The drawing struck me so 
 that I got you up in the books." 
 
 He appeared, however, rather comically, but 
 half to make it out, or to gather at any rate 
 that there was even more of it than he feared. 
 " Are we in the books ? " 
 
 " Did you never discover it ? " Before his 
 blankness, the dim apprehension in his fine 
 amused and troubled face of how much there 
 was of it, her frank, gay concern for him sprang 
 again to the front. "Where in heaven's name, 
 Captain Yule, have you come over from ? " 
 
 He looked at her very kindly, but as if scarce 
 expecting her to follow. " The East End of 
 London." 
 
 She had followed perfectly, he saw the next 
 instant, but she had by no means equally ac- 
 cepted. "What were you doing there?" 
 
 He could only put it, though a little over- 
 consciously, very simply. "Working, you see. 
 When I left the army it was much too slow, 
 unless one was personally a whirlwind of war 
 I began to make out that, for a fighting 
 man " 
 
 "There's always," she took him up, "some- 
 body or other to go for ? " 
 
 He considered her, while he smoked, with more
 
 COVERING END 301 
 
 confidence ; as if she might after all understand. 
 " The enemy, yes everywhere in force. I went 
 for him : misery and ignorance and vice injus- 
 tice and privilege and wrong. Such as you see 
 me " 
 
 " You're a rabid reformer ? " she understood 
 beautifully. " I wish we had you at Missoura 
 Top ! " 
 
 He literally, for a moment, in the light of her 
 beauty and familiarity, appeared to measure his 
 possible use there ; then, looking round him 
 again, announced with a sigh that, predicament 
 for predicament, his own would do. " I fear my 
 work is nearer home. I hope," he continued, 
 " since you're so good as to seem to care, to per- 
 form a part of that work in the next House of 
 Commons. My electors have wanted me " 
 
 "And you've wanted them" she lucidly put 
 in, "and that has been why you couldn't come 
 down." 
 
 " Yes, for all this last time. And before that, 
 from my childhood up, there was another reason." 
 He took a few steps away and brought it out as 
 rather a shabby one. "A family feud." 
 
 She proved to be quite delighted with it. 
 " Oh, I'm so glad I hoped I'd strike a ' feud ' ! 
 That rounds it off, and spices it up, and, for the
 
 302 COVERING END 
 
 heartbreak with which I take leave of you, just 
 neatly completes the fracture ! " Her reference 
 to her going seemed suddenly, on this, to bring 
 her back to a sense of proportion and propriety, 
 and she glanced about once more for some wrap 
 or reticule. This, in turn, however, was another 
 recall. "Must I really wait to go up?" 
 
 He had watched her movement, had changed 
 colour, had shifted his place, had tossed away, 
 plainly unwitting, a cigarette but half smoked ; 
 and now he stood in her path to the staircase as 
 if, still unsatisfied, he abruptly sought a way to 
 turn the tables. " Only till you tell me this : if 
 you absolutely meant, awhile ago, that this old 
 thing is so precious." 
 
 She met his doubt with amazement and his 
 density with compassion. " Do you literally 
 need I should say it? Can you stand here and 
 not feel it?" If he had the misfortune of ban- 
 daged eyes, she could at least rejoice in her own 
 vision, which grew intenser with her having to 
 speak for it. She spoke as with a new rush of 
 
 her impression. "It's a place to love " 
 
 Yet to say the whole thing was not easy. 
 
 "To love ?" he impatiently insisted. 
 
 " Well, as you'd love a person ! " If that was 
 saying the whole thing, saying the whole thing
 
 COVERING END 303 
 
 could only be to go. A sound from the " party 
 up " came down at that moment, and she took it 
 so clearly as a call that, for a sign of separation, 
 she passed straight to the stairs. " Good-bye ! " 
 
 The young man let her reach the foot, but 
 then, though the greatest width of the hall now 
 divided them, spoke, anxiously and nervously, as 
 if the point she had just made brought them still 
 more together. " I think I ' feel ' it, you know ; 
 but it's simply you your presence, as I may 
 say, and the remarkable way you put it that 
 
 make me. I'm afraid that in your absence " 
 
 He struck a match to smoke again. 
 
 It gave her time apparently to make out some- 
 thing to pause for. " In my absence ? " 
 
 He lit his cigarette. "I may come back " 
 
 " Come back ? " she took him almost sharply 
 up. "I should like to see you not!" 
 
 He smoked a moment. "I mean to my old 
 idea " 
 
 She had quite turned round on him now. 
 "Your old idea ?" 
 
 He faced her over the width still between 
 them. "Well that one could give it up." 
 
 Her stare, at this, fairly filled the space. 
 " Give up Covering ? How in the world or 
 why?"
 
 304 COVERING END 
 
 "Because I can't afford to keep it." 
 
 It brought her straight back, but only half- 
 way : she pulled up short as at a flash. " Can't 
 you let it ? " 
 
 Again he smoked before answering. " Let it 
 to you ? " 
 
 She gave a laugh, and her laugh brought her 
 nearer. " I'd take it in a minute ! " 
 
 Clement Yule remained grave. " I shouldn't 
 have the face to charge you a rent that would 
 make it worth one's while, and I think even you, 
 dear lady " his voice just trembled as he risked 
 that address "wouldn't have the face to offer 
 me one." He paused, but something in his as- 
 pect and manner checked in her now any impulse 
 to read his meaning too soon. "My lovely in- 
 heritance is Dead Sea fruit. It's mortgaged for 
 all it's worth and I haven't the means to pay 
 the interest. If by a miracle I could scrape the 
 money together, it would leave me without a 
 penny to live on." He puffed his cigarette 
 profusely. " So if I find the old home at last 
 I lose it by the same luck ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew had hung upon his words, and 
 she seemed still to wait, in visible horror, for 
 something that would improve on them. But 
 when she had to take them for his last, " I never 

 
 COVERING END 305 
 
 heard of anything so awful ! " she broke out. 
 " Do you mean to say you can't arrange ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," he promptly replied, " an arrange- 
 ment if that be the name to give it has been 
 definitely proposed to me." 
 
 "What's the matter, then ?" she had dropped 
 into relief. " For heaven's sake, you poor thing, 
 definitely accept it ! " 
 
 He laughed, though with little joy, at her 
 sweet simplifications. " I've made up my mind 
 in the last quarter of an hour that I can't. It's 
 such a peculiar case." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew frankly wondered ; her bias 
 was clearly sceptical. " How peculiar ? " 
 
 He found the measure difficult to give. " Well 
 more peculiar than most cases." 
 
 Still she was not satisfied. " More peculiar 
 than mine ? " 
 
 " Than yours ? " Clement Yule knew nothing 
 about that. 
 
 Something, at this, in his tone, his face it 
 might have been his " British " density seemed 
 to pull her up. "I forgot you don't know 
 mine. No matter. What is yours ? " 
 
 He took a few steps in thought. " Well, the 
 fact that I'm asked to change." 
 
 " To change what ? "
 
 306 COVERING END 
 
 He wondered how he could put it ; then at 
 last, on his own side, simplified. " My atti- 
 tude." 
 
 " Is that all ? " she was relieved again. 
 "Well, you're not a statue." 
 
 " No, I'm not a statue ; but on the other hand, 
 don't you see? I'm not a windmill." There 
 was good-humour, none the less, in his rigour. 
 " The mortgages I speak of have all found their 
 way, like gregarious silly sheep, into the hands 
 of one person a devouring wolf, a very rich, a 
 very sharp man of money. He holds me in this 
 manner at his mercy. He consents to make 
 things comfortable for me, but he requires that, 
 in return, I shall do something for him that 
 don't you know? rather sticks in my crop." 
 
 It appeared on this light showing to stick for 
 a moment even in Mrs. Gracedew's. "Do you 
 mean something wrong?" 
 
 He had not a moment's hesitation. " Exceed- 
 ingly so ! " 
 
 She turned it over as if pricing a Greek Aldus. 
 " Anything immoral ? " 
 
 " Yes I may literally call it immoral. " 
 
 She courted, however, frankly enough, the 
 strict truth. "Top bad to tell?" 
 
 He indulged in another pensive fidget, then
 
 COVEKING END 307 
 
 left her to judge. "He wants me to give 
 up " Yet again he faltered. 
 
 "To give up what?" What could it be, she 
 appeared to ask, that was barely nameable ? 
 
 He quite blushed to her indeed as he came to 
 the point. " My fundamental views." 
 
 She was disappointed she had waited for 
 more. " Nothing but them ? " 
 
 He met her with astonishment. "Surely 
 they're quite enough, when one has unfortu- 
 nately" he rather ruefully smiled "so very 
 many ! " 
 
 She laughed aloud ; this was frankly so odd 
 a plea. "Well, Tve a neat collection too, but 
 I'd 'swap,' as they say in the West, the whole 
 set ! " She looked about the hall for some- 
 thing of equivalent price ; after which she 
 pointed, as it caught her eye, to the great cave 
 of the fireplace. " I'd take that set ! " 
 
 The young man scarcely followed. " The fire- 
 irons?" 
 
 " For the whole fundamental lot ! " She 
 gazed with real yearning at the antique group. 
 "They're three hundred years old. Do you 
 mean to tell me your wretched ' views ' ? " 
 
 "Have anything like that age? No, thank 
 God," Clement Yule laughed, "my views
 
 308 COVERING END 
 
 wretched as you please ! are quite in their 
 prime ! They're a hungry little family that 
 has got to be fed. They keep me awake at 
 night." 
 
 " Then you must make up your sleep ! " Her 
 impatience grew with her interest. "Listen to 
 me!" 
 
 " That would scarce be the way ! " he returned. 
 But he added more sincerely : " You must surely 
 see a fellow can't chuck his politics." 
 
 " * Chuck ' them ? " 
 
 Well sacrifice them. " 
 
 "I'd sacrifice mine," she cried, "for that old 
 fire-back with your arms ! " He glanced at the 
 object in question, but with such a want of in- 
 telligence that she visibly resented it. "See 
 how it has stood ! " 
 
 " See how I've stood ! " he answered with 
 spirit. "I've glowed with a hotter fire than 
 anything in any chimney, and the warmth and 
 light I diffuse have attracted no little atten- 
 tion. How can I consent to reduce them to 
 the state of that desolate hearth?" 
 
 His companion, freshly struck with the fine 
 details of the desolation, had walked over to 
 the chimney-corner, where, lost in her deeper 
 impression, she lingered and observed. At last
 
 COVEKING END 309 
 
 she turned away with her impatience controlled. 
 " It's magnificent ! " 
 
 "The fire-back?" 
 
 " Everything everywhere. I don't under- 
 stand your haggling." 
 
 He hesitated. " That's because you're igno- 
 rant." Then seeing in the light of her eye 
 that he had applied to her the word in the lan- 
 guage she least liked, he hastened to attenuate. 
 "I mean of what's behind my reserves." 
 
 She was silent in a way that made their talk 
 more of a discussion than if she had spoken. 
 " What is behind them ? " she presently asked. 
 
 " Why, my whole political history. Every- 
 thing I've said, everything I've done. My 
 scorching addresses and letters, reproduced in 
 all the papers. I needn't go into details, but 
 I'm a pure, passionate, pledged Radical." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked him full in the face. 
 " Well, what if you are ? " 
 
 He broke into mirth at her tone. " Simply 
 this that I can't therefore, from one day to 
 the other, pop up at Gossage in the purple 
 pomp of the opposite camp. There's a want of 
 transition. It may be timid of me it may 
 be abject. But I can't." 
 
 If she was not yet prepared to contest she
 
 310 COVEEING END 
 
 was still less prepared to surrender it, and she 
 confined herself for the instant to smoothing 
 down with her foot the corner of an old rug. 
 "Have you thought very much about it?" 
 
 He was vague. " About what ? " 
 
 "About what Mr. Prodmore wants you to 
 do." ' 
 
 He flushed up. "Oh, then, you know it's 
 he?" 
 
 "I'm not," she said, still gravely enough, "of 
 an intelligence absolutely infantile." 
 
 " You're the cleverest Tory I've ever met ! " 
 he laughed. "I didn't mean to mention my 
 
 friend's name, but since you've done so ! " 
 
 He gave up with a shrug his scruple. 
 
 Oh, she had already cleared the ground of 
 it ! " It's he who's the devouring wolf ? It's 
 he who holds your mortgages ? " 
 
 The very lucidity of her interest just checked 
 his assent. "He holds plenty of others, and 
 he treats me very handsomely." 
 
 She showed of a sudden an inconsequent 
 face. " Do you call that handsome such a 
 condition? " 
 
 He shed surprise. " Why, I thought it was 
 just the condition you could meet." 
 
 She measured her inconsistency, but was not
 
 COVERING. END 311 
 
 abashed. " We're not talking of what I can 
 meet." Yet she found also a relief in dropping 
 the point. " Why doesn't he stand himself ? " 
 
 "Well, like other devouring wolves, he's not 
 personally adored." 
 
 "Not even," she asked, "when he offers such 
 liberal terms?" 
 
 Clement Yule had to explain. " I dare say he 
 doesn't offer them to everyone." 
 
 "Only to you?" at this she quite sprang. 
 " You are personally adored ; you will be still 
 more if you stand ; and that, you poor lamb, is 
 why he wants you ! " 
 
 The young man, obviously pleased to find her 
 after all more at one with him, accepted grace- 
 fully enough the burden her sympathy imposed. 
 " I'm the bearer of my name, I'm the representa- 
 tive of my family ; and to my family and my 
 name since you've led me to it this coun- 
 tryside has been for generations indulgently 
 attached." 
 
 She listened to him with a sentiment in her 
 face that showed how now, at last, she felt herself 
 deal with the lawful heir. She seemed to per- 
 ceive it with a kind of passion. "You do of 
 course what you will with the countryside ! " 
 
 Yes" he went with her "if we do it as
 
 312 COVERING END 
 
 genuine Yules. I'm obliged of course to grant 
 you that your genuine Yule's a Tory of Tories. 
 It's Mr. Prodmore's belief that I should carry 
 Gossage in that character, but in that character 
 only. They won't look at me in any other." 
 
 It might have taxed a spectator to say in what 
 character Mrs. Gracedew, on this, for a little, con- 
 sidered him. " Don't be too sure of people's not 
 looking at you ! " 
 
 He blushed again, but he laughed. " We must 
 leave out my personal beauty." 
 
 " We can't ! " she replied with decision. 
 "Don't we take in Mr. Prodmore's?" 
 
 Captain Yule was not prepared. " You call 
 him beautiful?" 
 
 " Hideous. " She settled it ; then pursued her 
 investigation. " What's the extraordinary inter- 
 est that he attaches ? " 
 
 " To the return of a Tory ? " Here the young 
 man was prepared. "Oh, his desire is born of 
 his fear his terror on behalf of Property, which 
 he sees, somehow, with an intensely Personal, 
 with a quite colossal 'P.' He has a great deal of 
 that article, and very little of anything else." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, accepting provisionally his dem- 
 onstration, had one of her friendly recalls. " Do 
 you call that nice daughter * very little ' ? "
 
 COVERING END 313 
 
 The young man looked quite at a loss. " Is she 
 very big ? I really didn't notice her and more- 
 over she's just a part of the Property. He thinks 
 things are going too far." 
 
 She sat straight down on a stiff chair ; on 
 which, with high distinctness : "Well, they are ! " 
 
 He stood before her in the discomposure of her 
 again thus appearing to fail him. "Aren't you 
 then a lover of justice?" 
 
 " A passionate one ! " She sat there as upright 
 as if she held the scales. " Where's the justice of 
 your losing this house ? " Generous as well as 
 strenuous, all her fairness thrown out by her dark 
 old high-backed seat, she put it to him as from 
 the judicial bench. "To keep Covering, you 
 must carry Gossage ! " 
 
 The odd face he made at it might have betrayed 
 a man dazzled. " As a renegade ? " 
 
 " As a genuine Yule. What business have you 
 to be anything else ? " She had already arranged 
 it all. "You must close with Mr. Prodmore 
 you must stand in the Tory interest." She hung 
 fire a moment ; then as she got up : " If you will, 
 I'll conduct your canvass ! " 
 
 He stared at the distracting picture. "That 
 puts the temptation high ! " 
 
 But she brushed the mere picture away. " Ah,
 
 314 COVERING END 
 
 don't look at me as if J were the temptation ! 
 Look at this sweet old human home, and feel all 
 its gathered memories. Do you want to know 
 what they do to me ? " She took the survey her- 
 self again, as if to be really sure. " They speak 
 to me for Mr. Prodmore." 
 
 He followed with a systematic docility the di- 
 rection of her eyes, but as if with the result only 
 of its again coming home to him that there was 
 no accounting for what things might do. " Well, 
 there are others than these, you know," he good- 
 naturedly pleaded " things for which I've spoken, 
 repeatedly and loudly, to others than you." The 
 very manner of his speaking on such occasions 
 appeared, for that matter, now to come back to 
 him. " One's ' human home ' is all very well, but 
 the rest of one's humanity is better ! " She gave, 
 at this, a droll soft wail ; she turned impatiently 
 away. " I see you're disgusted with me, and I'm 
 sorry ; but one must take one's self as circum- 
 stances and experience have made one, and its 
 not my fault, don't you know ? if they've made 
 me a very modern man. I see something else in 
 the world than the beauty of old show-houses and 
 the glory of old show-families. There are thou- 
 sands of people in England who can show no 
 houses at all, and I don't feel it utterly shameful 
 to share their poor fate ! "
 
 COVERING END 315 
 
 She had moved away with impatience, and it 
 was the advantage of this for her that the back 
 she turned prevented him from seeing how in- 
 tently she listened. She seemed to continue to 
 listen even after he had stopped ; but if that 
 gave him a sense of success, he might have been 
 checked by the way she at last turned round with 
 a sad and beautiful headshake. "We share the 
 poor fate of humanity whatever we do, and we do 
 something to help and console when we've some- 
 thing precious to show. What on earth is more 
 precious than what the ages have slowly wrought ? 
 They've trusted us, in such a case, to keep it 
 to do something, in our turn, for them." She 
 shone out at him as if her contention had the 
 evidence of the noonday sun, and yet in her gen- 
 erosity she superabounded and explained. "It's 
 such a virtue, in anything, to have lasted; it's 
 such an honour, for anything, to have been spared. 
 To all strugglers from the wreck of time hold out 
 a pitying hand ! " 
 
 Yule, on this argument, of a strain which 
 even a good experience of debate could scarce have 
 prepared him to meet, had not a congruous re- 
 joinder absolutely pat, and his hesitation unfort- 
 unately gave him time to see how soon his 
 companion made out that what had touched him
 
 316 COVERING END 
 
 most in it was her particular air in presenting it. 
 She would manifestly have preferred he should 
 have been floored by her mere moral reach ; yet 
 he was aware that his own made no great show as 
 he took refuge in general pleasantry. " What a 
 plea for looking backward, dear lady, to come 
 from Missoura Top ! " 
 
 "We're making a Past at Missoura Top as fast 
 as ever we can, and I should like to see you lay 
 your hand on an hour of the one we've made ! It's 
 a tight fit, as yet, I grant," she said, " and that's 
 just why I like, in yours, to find room, don't you 
 see ? to turn round. You're in it, over here, and 
 you can't get out ; so just make the best of that 
 and treat the thing as part of the fun ! " 
 
 " The whole of the fun, to me," the young man 
 replied, "is in hearing you defend it ! It's like 
 your defending hereditary gout or chronic rheu- 
 matism and sore throat the things I feel aching 
 in every old bone of these walls and groaning in 
 every old draught that, I'm sure, has for cen- 
 turies blown through them." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked as if no woman could be 
 shaken who was so prepared to be just all round. 
 " If there be aches there may be you're here 
 to soothe them, and if there be draughts there 
 must be ! you're here to stop them up. And
 
 COVERING END 31T 
 
 do you know what Pm here for ? If I've come 
 so far and so straight, I've almost wondered my- 
 self. I've felt with a kind of passion but now 
 I see why I've felt." She moved about the hall 
 with the excitement of this perception, and, sepa- 
 rated from him at last by a distance across which 
 he followed her discovery with a visible suspense, 
 she brought out the news. "I'm here for an act 
 of salvation I'm here to avert a sacrifice ! " 
 
 So they stood a little, with more, for the 
 minute, passing between them than either really 
 could say. She might have flung down a glove 
 that he decided on the whole, passing his hand 
 over his head as the seat of some confusion, not 
 to pick up. Again, but flushed as well as smil- 
 ing, he sought the easiest cover. " You're here, 
 I think, madam, to be a memory for all my 
 future ! " 
 
 Well, she was willing, she showed as she came 
 nearer, to take it, at the worst, for that. " You'll 
 be one for mine, if I can see you by that hearth. 
 Why do you make such a fuss about changing 
 your politics ? If you'd come to Missoura Top, 
 you'd change them quick enough ! " Then, as 
 she saw further and struck harder, her eyes grew 
 deep, her face even seemed to pale, and she paused, 
 splendid and serious, with the force of her plea.
 
 318 COVERING END 
 
 " What do politics amount to, compared with 
 religions ? Parties and programmes come and go, 
 but a duty like this abides. There's nothing you 
 can break with " she pressed him closer, ringing 
 out "that would be like breaking here. The 
 very words are violent and ugly as much a 
 sacrilege as if you had been trusted with the key 
 of the temple. This is the temple don't pro- 
 fane it ! Keep up the old altar kindly you 
 can't set up a new one as good. You must have 
 beauty in your life, don't you see ? that's the 
 only way to make sure of it for the lives of others. 
 Keep leaving it to them, to all the poor others," 
 she went on with her bright irony, "and heaven 
 only knows what will become of it ! Does it take 
 one of us to feel that ? to preach you the truth ? 
 Then it's good, Captain Yule, we come right over 
 just to see, you know, what you may happen to 
 be about. We know," she went on while her 
 sense of proportion seemed to play into her sense 
 of humour, " what we haven't got, worse luck ; so 
 that if you've happily got it you've got it also for 
 us. You've got it in trust, you see, and oh ! we 
 have an eye on you. You've had it so for me, all 
 these dear days that I've been drinking it in, that, 
 to be grateful, I've wanted regularly to do some- 
 thing." With which, as if in the rich confidence
 
 COVERING END 319 
 
 of having convinced him, she came so near as 
 almost to touch him. " Tell me now I shall have 
 done it I shall have kept you at your post I " 
 
 If he moved, on this, immediately further, it 
 was with the oddest air of seeking rather to study 
 her remarks at his ease than to express an inde- 
 pendence of them. He kept, to this end, his 
 face averted he was so completely now in 
 intelligent possession of her own. The sacrifice 
 in question carried him even to the door of the 
 court, where he once more stood so long engaged 
 that the persistent presentation of his back might 
 at last have suggested either a confession or a 
 request. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, meanwhile, a little spent with 
 her sincerity, seated herself again in the great 
 chair, and if she sought, visibly enough, to read 
 a meaning into his movement, she had as little 
 triumph for one possible view of it as she had 
 resentment for the other. The possibility that 
 he yielded left her after all as vague in respect 
 to a next step as the possibility that he merely 
 wished to get rid of her. The moments elapsed 
 without her abdicating ; and indeed when he 
 finally turned round his expression was an equal 
 check to any power to feel she might have won. 
 " You have," he queerly smiled at her, " a stand-
 
 320 COVERING END 
 
 point quite your own and a style of eloquence 
 that the few scraps of parliamentary training I've 
 picked up don't seem at all to fit me to deal 
 with. Of course I don't pretend, you know, 
 that I don't care for Covering." 
 
 That, at all events, she could be glad to hear, 
 if only perhaps for the tone in it that was so 
 almost comically ingenuous. But her relief was 
 reasonable and her exultation temperate. " You 
 haven't even seen it yet." She risked, however, 
 a laugh. " Aren't you a bit afraid ? " 
 
 He took a minute to reply, then replied 
 as if to make it up with a grand collapse. 
 "Yes; awfully. But if I am," he hastened in 
 decency to add, "it isn't only Covering that 
 makes me." 
 
 This left his friend apparently at a loss. 
 "What else is it?" 
 
 "Everything. But it doesn't in the least 
 matter," he loosely pursued. "You may be 
 quite correct. When we talk of the house your 
 voice comes to me somehow as the wind in its 
 old chimneys." 
 
 Her amusement distinctly revived. "I hope 
 you don't mean I roar I " 
 
 He blushed again; there was no doubt he 
 was confused. "No nor yet perhaps that you
 
 COVERING END 321 
 
 whistle ! I don't believe the wind does either, 
 here. It only whispers," he sought gracefully 
 to explain; "and it sighs " 
 
 "And I hope," she broke in, "that it some- 
 times laughs ! " 
 
 The sound she gave only made him, as he 
 looked at her, more serious. "Whatever it 
 does, it's all right." 
 
 " All right ? " they were sufficiently together 
 again for her to lay her hand straight on his 
 arm. " Then you promise ? " 
 
 "Promise what?" 
 
 He had turned as pale as if she hurt him, 
 and she took her hand away. "To meet Mr. 
 Prodmore." 
 
 "Oh, dear, no; not yet!" he quite recov- 
 ered himself. "I must wait I must think." 
 
 She looked disappointed, and there was a 
 momentary silence. "When have you to an- 
 swer him ? " 
 
 " Oh, he gives me time ! " Clement Yule 
 spoke very much as he might have said, "Oh, 
 in two minutes ! " 
 
 " I wouldn't give you time," Mrs. Gracedew 
 cried with force "I'd give you a shaking! 
 For God's sake, at any rate" and she really 
 tried to push him off " go upstairs ! "
 
 322 COVERING END 
 
 " And literally find the dreadful man ? " This 
 was so little his personal idea that, distinctly 
 dodging her pressure, he had already reached 
 the safe quarter. 
 
 But it befell that at the same moment she 
 saw Cora reappear on the upper landing a 
 circumstance that promised her a still better 
 conclusion. " He's coming down ! " 
 
 Cora, in spite of this announcement, came 
 down boldly enough without him and made 
 directly for Mrs. Gracedew, to whom her eyes 
 had attached themselves with an undeviating 
 glare. Her plain purpose of treating this lady 
 as an isolated presence allowed their companion 
 perfect freedom to consider her arrival with 
 sharp alarm. His disconcerted stare seemed 
 for a moment to balance; it wandered, gave 
 a wild glance at the open door, then searched 
 the ascent of the staircase, in which, apparently, 
 it now found a coercion. " I'll go up ! " he 
 gasped ; and he took three steps at a time.
 
 THE girl threw herself, in her flushed eagerness, 
 straight upon the wonderful lady. "I've come 
 back to you I want to speak to you ! " The 
 need had been a rapid growth, but it was clearly 
 immense. " May I confide in you ? " 
 
 Her instant overflow left Mrs. Gracedew both as- 
 tonished and amused. " You too ? " she laughed. 
 " Why it is good we come over ! " 
 
 " It is, indeed ! " Cora gratefully echoed. " You 
 were so very kind to me and seemed to think me 
 so curious." 
 
 The mirth of her friend redoubled. " Well, I 
 loved you for it, and it was nothing moreover to 
 what you thought me ! " 
 
 Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial 
 she only presented her frank high colour. "I 
 loved you. But I'm the worst ! " she generously 
 added. " And I'm solitary." 
 
 " Ah, so am I ! " Mrs. Gracedew declared with 
 gaiety, but with emphasis. " A very queer thing
 
 324 COVERING END 
 
 always is solitary ! But, since we have that link, 
 by all means confide." 
 
 " Well, I was met here by tremendous news." 
 Cora produced it with a purple glow. " He wants 
 me to marry him ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as 
 if she failed as yet to follow. " ' He' wants you ? " 
 
 " Papa, of course. He has settled it ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. "Settled 
 what?" 
 
 " Why, the whole question. That I must take 
 him." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own 
 scattered wits. " But, my dear, take whom ? " 
 
 The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her 
 powers. " Why, Captain Yule, who just went 
 up." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. 
 " Oh ! " she repeated, looking straight away. 
 
 "I thought you would know," Cora gently 
 explained. 
 
 Her friend's eyes, with a kinder light now, 
 came back to her. " I didn't know." Mrs. Grace- 
 dew looked, in truth, as if that had been suffi- 
 ciently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or 
 three things more. It all, however, broke quickly 
 into a question. " Has Captain Yule asked you ? "
 
 COVERING END 325 
 
 " No, but he will " Cora was clear as a bell. 
 " He'll do it to keep the house. It's mortgaged 
 to papa, and Captain Yule buys it back." 
 
 Her friend had an illumination that was rapid 
 for the way it spread. " By marrying you ? " she 
 quavered. 
 
 Cora, under further parental instruction, had 
 plainly mastered the subject. " By giving me his 
 name and his position. They're awfully great, 
 and they're the price, don't you see ? " she mod- 
 estly mentioned. "My price. Papa's price. 
 Papa wants them." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold ; yet there 
 were places where her grasp was weak, and she 
 had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. " But 
 his name and his position, great as they may be, 
 are his dreadful politics ! " 
 
 Cora threw herself with energy into this ad- 
 vance. " You know about his dreadful politics ? 
 He's to change them," she recited, "to get me. 
 And if he gets me " 
 
 "He keeps the house?" Mrs. Gracedew 
 snatched it up. 
 
 Cora continued to show her schooling. " I go 
 with it he's to have us both. But only," she 
 admonishingly added, "if he changes. The 
 question is will he change ? "
 
 326 COVERING END 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to enter- 
 tain it. " I see. Will he change ? " 
 
 Cora's consideration of it went even further. 
 "Has he changed?" 
 
 It went and the effect was odd a little 
 too far for her companion, in whom, just dis- 
 cernibly, it had touched the spring of impa- 
 tience. " My dear child, how in the world 
 should J know ? " 
 
 But Cora knew exactly how anyone would 
 know. "He hasn't seemed to care enough for 
 the house. Does he care?" 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew moved away, passed over to 
 the fireplace, and stood a moment looking at 
 the old armorial fire-back she had praised to its 
 master yet not, it must be added, as if she 
 particularly saw it. Then as she faced about : 
 " You had better ask him ! " 
 
 They stood thus confronted, with the fine old 
 interval between them, and the girl's air was 
 for a moment that of considering such a course. 
 " If he does care," she said at last, " he'll 
 propose." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, from where she stood in rela- 
 tion to the stairs, saw at this point the subject 
 of their colloquy restored to view : Captain 
 Yule was just upon them he had turned the
 
 COVERING END 327 
 
 upper landing. The sight of him forced from 
 her in a flash an ejaculation that she tried, how- 
 ever, to keep private " He does care ! " She 
 passed swiftly, before he reached them, back to 
 the girl and, in a quick whisper, but with full 
 conviction, let her have it : " He'll propose ! " 
 
 Her movement had made her friend aware, 
 and the young man, hurrying down, was now 
 in the hall. Cora, at his hurry, looked dismay 
 " Then I fly ! " With which, casting about 
 for a direction, she reached the door to the 
 court. 
 
 Captain Yule, however, at this result of his 
 return, expressed instant regret. " I drive Miss 
 Prodmore away ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, more quickly still, eased off 
 the situation. " It's all right ! " She had em- 
 braced both parties with a smile, but it was 
 most liberal now for Cora. "Do you mind, 
 one moment?" it conveyed, unmistakeably, a 
 full intelligence and a fine explanation. "I've 
 something to say to Captain Yule." 
 
 Cora stood in the doorway, robust against the 
 garden-light, and looking from one to the other. 
 "Yes but I've also something more to say to 
 you." 
 
 " Do you mean now ? " the young man asked.
 
 d2 COVERING END 
 
 It was the first time he had spoken to her, 
 and her hesitation might have signified a 
 maidenly flutter. "No but before she goes." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew took it amiably up. " Come 
 back, then ; I'm not going." And there was 
 both dismissal and encouragement in the way 
 that, as on the occasion of the girl's former 
 retreat, she blew her a familiar kiss. Cora, still 
 with her face to them, waited just enough to 
 show that she took it without a response ; then, 
 with a quick turn, dashed out, while Mrs. Grace- 
 dew looked at their visitor in vague surprise. 
 "What's the matter with her?" 
 
 She had turned away as soon as she spoke, 
 moving as far from him as she had moved a few 
 moments before from Cora. The silence that, 
 as he watched her, followed her question would 
 have been seen by a spectator to be a hard one 
 for either to break. " I don't know what's the 
 matter with her," he said at last ; " I'm afraid I 
 only know what's the matter with me. It will 
 doubtless give you pleasure to learn," he added, 
 "that I've closed with Mr. Prodmore." 
 
 It was a speech that, strangely enough, seemed 
 but half to dissipate the hush. Mrs. Gracedew 
 reached the great chimney again ; again she 
 stood there with her face averted ; and when she
 
 COVERING END 329 
 
 finally replied it was in other words than he 
 might have supposed himself naturally to in- 
 spire. "I thought you said he gave you time." 
 
 " Yes ; but you produced just now so deep an 
 effect on me that I thought best not to take 
 any." He appeared to listen to a sound from 
 above, and, for a moment, under this impulse, his 
 eyes travelled about almost as if he were alone. 
 Then he completed, with deliberation, his state- 
 ment. " I came upon him right there, and I 
 burnt my ships." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew continued not to meet his face. 
 " You do what he requires ? " 
 
 The young man was markedly, consciously 
 caught. "I do what he requires. I felt the 
 tremendous force of all you said to me." 
 
 She turned round on him now, as if perhaps 
 with a slight sharpness, the face of responsibility 
 even, it might be, of reproach. "So did I 
 or I shouldn't have said it ! " 
 
 It was doubtless this element of justification in 
 her tone that drew from him a laugh a tiny trifle 
 dry. " You're perhaps not aware that you wield an 
 influence of which it's not too much to say " 
 
 But he paused at the important point so long 
 that she took him up. " To say what ? " 
 
 " Well, that it's practically irresistible ! "
 
 330 COVERING END 
 
 It sounded a little as if it had not been what he 
 first meant ; but it made her, none the less, still 
 graver and just faintly ironical. " You've given 
 me the most flattering proof of my influence that 
 I've ever enjoyed in my life ! " 
 
 He fixed her very hard, now distinctly so 
 mystified that he could only wonder what dif- 
 ferent recall of her previous attitude she would 
 have looked for. " This was inevitable, dear 
 madam, from the moment you had converted 
 me and in about three minutes too! into the 
 absolute echo of your raptures." 
 
 Nothing was, indeed, more extraordinary than 
 her air of having suddenly forgotten them. " My 
 1 raptures ' ? " 
 
 He was amazed. "Why, about my home." 
 
 He might look her through and through, but 
 she had no eyes for himself, though she had now 
 quitted the fireplace and finally recognised this 
 allusion. " Oh, yes your home ! " From where 
 had she come back to it ? " It's a nice tattered, 
 battered old thing." This account of it was the 
 more shrunken that her observation, even as she 
 spoke, freshly went the rounds. " It has defects 
 of course" with this renewed attention they 
 appeared suddenly to strike her. They had 
 popped out, conspicuous, and for a little it might
 
 COVERING END 331 
 
 have been a matter of conscience. However, her 
 conscience dropped. "But it's no use mention- 
 ing them now ! " 
 
 They had half an hour earlier been vividly 
 present to himself, but to see her thus oddly 
 pulled up by them was to forget on the spot 
 the ground he had taken. "I'm particularly 
 sorry," he returned with some spirit, "that you 
 didn't mention them before ! " 
 
 At this imputation of inconsequence, of a 
 levity not, after all, without its excuse, Mrs. 
 Gracedew was reduced, in keeping her resent- 
 ment down, to an effort not quite successfully 
 disguised. It was in a tone, nevertheless, all the 
 more mild in intention that she reminded him 
 of where he had equally failed. "If you had 
 really gone over the house, as I almost went on 
 my knees to you to do, you might have discov- 
 ered some of them yourself ! " 
 
 " How can you say that," the young man 
 asked with heat, " when I was precisely in the 
 very act of it? It was just because I was that 
 the first person I met above was Mr. Prodmore ; 
 on which, feeling that I must come to it sooner 
 or later, I simply gave in to him on the spot 
 yielded him, to have it well over, the whole 
 of his point."
 
 332 COVEKING END 
 
 She listened to this account of the matter as 
 she might have gazed, from afar, at some queer 
 object that was scarce distinguishable. It left 
 her a moment in the deepest thought, but she 
 presently recovered her tone. "Let me then 
 congratulate you on at last knowing what you 
 want ! " 
 
 But there were, after all, he instantly showed, 
 no such great reasons for that. " I only know 
 it so far as you know it ! I struck while the 
 iron was hot or at any rate while the hammer 
 was." 
 
 "Of course I recognise" she adopted his 
 image with her restored gaiety " that it can 
 rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I 
 blazed up, and I know that when I burn " 
 
 She had pulled up with the foolish sense of 
 this. "When you burn?" 
 
 "Well, I do it as Chicago does." 
 
 He also could laugh out now. " Isn't that 
 usually down to the ground ? " 
 
 Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light 
 arms. " As high as the sky ! " Then she came 
 back, as with a scruple, to the real ques- 
 tion. "I suppose you've still formalities to go 
 through." 
 
 " With Mr. Prodmore ? " Well, he would sup-
 
 COVERING END 333 
 
 pose it too if she liked. " Oh, endless, tiresome 
 ones, no doubt ! " 
 
 This sketch of them made her wonder. " You 
 mean they'll take so very, very long ? " 
 
 He seemed after all to know perfectly what 
 he meant. " Every hour, every month, that I 
 can possibly make them last ! " 
 
 She was with him here, however, but to a cer- 
 tain point. "You mustn't drag them out too 
 much must you? Won't he think in that 
 case you may want to retract ? " 
 
 Yule apparently tried to focus Mr. Prodmore 
 under this delusion, and with a success that had 
 a quick, odd result. " I shouldn't be so terribly 
 upset by his mistake, you know, even if he did ! " 
 
 His manner, with its slight bravado, left her 
 proportionately shocked. " Oh, it would never 
 do to give him any colour whatever for supposing 
 you to have any doubt that, as one may say, 
 you've pledged your honour." 
 
 He devoted to this proposition more thought 
 than its simplicity would have seemed to de- 
 mand ; but after a minute, at all events, his 
 intelligence triumphed. " Of course not not 
 when I haven't any doubt ! " 
 
 Though his intelligence had triumphed, she 
 still wished to show she was there to support it.
 
 334 COVERING END 
 
 "How can you possibly have any any more 
 than you can possibly have that one's honour is 
 everything in life?" And her charming eyes 
 expressed to him her need to feel that he was 
 quite at one with her on that point. 
 
 He could give her every assurance. " Oh, yes 
 everything in life I " 
 
 It did her much good, brought back the rest 
 of her brightness. " Wasn't it just of the ques- 
 tion of the honour of things that we talked 
 awhile ago and of the difficulty of sometimes 
 keeping our sense of it clear? There's no more 
 to be said therefore," she went on with the faint- 
 est soft sigh about it, "except that I leave you 
 to your ancient glory as I leave you to your 
 strict duty." She had these things there before 
 her; they might have been a well-spread board 
 from which she turned away fasting. "I hope 
 you'll do justice to dear old Covering in spite 
 of its weak points, and I hope above all you'll 
 not be incommoded " 
 
 As she hesitated here he was too intent. " In- 
 commoded ? " 
 
 She saw it better than she could express it. 
 " "Well, by such a rage ! " 
 
 He challenged this description with a strange 
 gleam. "You suppose it will be a rage ? "
 
 COVERING END 335 
 
 She laughed out at his look. " Are you afraid 
 of the love that kills?" 
 
 He grew singularly grave. " Will it kill ?" 
 
 " Great passions have ! " she was highly 
 amused. 
 
 But he could only stare. " Is it a great pas- 
 sion?" 
 
 " Surely when so many feel it ! " 
 
 He was fairly bewildered. " But how many 
 ?" 
 
 She reckoned them up. " Let's see. If you 
 count them all " 
 
 " * All ' ? " Clement Yule gasped. 
 
 She looked at him, in turn, slightly mystified. 
 " I see. You knock off some. About half ? " 
 
 It was too obscure he broke down. "Whom 
 on earth are you talking about? " 
 
 "Why, the electors " 
 
 " Of Gossage ? " he leaped at it. " Oh ! " 
 
 "I got the whole thing up there are six 
 thousand. It's such a fine figure ! " said Mrs. 
 Gracedew. 
 
 He had sharply passed from her, to cover his 
 mistake, and it carried him half round the hall. 
 Then, as if aware that this pause itself compro- 
 mised him, he came back confusedly and with her 
 last words in his ear. " Has she a fine figure ? "
 
 66Q COVERING END 
 
 But her own thoughts were off. "'She'?" 
 
 He blushed and recovered himself. " Aren't 
 we talking " 
 
 " Of Gossage ? Oh, yes she has every charm ! 
 Good-bye," said Mrs. Gracedew. 
 
 He pulled, at this, the longest face, but was 
 kept dumb a moment by the very decision with 
 which she again began to gather herself, It 
 held him helpless, and there was finally real 
 despair in his retarded protest. " You don't 
 mean to say you're going ? " 
 
 "You don't mean to say you're surprised at 
 it? Haven't I done," she luminously asked, 
 " what I told you I had been so mystically moved 
 to come for?" She recalled to him by her re- 
 newed supreme survey the limited character of 
 this errand, which she then in a brisk familiar 
 word expressed to the house itself. "You dear 
 old thing you're saved ! " 
 
 Clement Yule might on the other hand, by his 
 simultaneous action, have given himself out for 
 lost. " For God's sake," he cried as he circled 
 earnestly round her, " don't go till I can come 
 back to thank you ! " He pulled out his watch. 
 "I promised to return immediately to Prod- 
 more." 
 
 This completely settled his visitor. "Then
 
 COVERING END 337 
 
 don't let me, for a moment more, keep you away 
 from him. You must have such lots " it went 
 almost without saying " to talk comfortably 
 over." 
 
 The young man's embrace of that was, in his 
 restless movement, to roam to the end of the 
 hall furthest from the stairs. But here his as- 
 sent was entire. " I certainly feel, you know, 
 that I must see him again." He rambled even 
 to the open door and looked with incoherence 
 into the court. "Yes, decidedly, I must!" 
 
 " Is he out there ? " Mrs. Gracedew lightly 
 asked. 
 
 He turned short round. "No I left him 
 in the long gallery." 
 
 " You saw that, then ? " she flashed back into 
 eagerness. " Isn't it lovely ? " 
 
 Clement Yule rather wondered. "I didn't 
 notice it. How could I?" 
 
 His face was so woeful that she broke into a 
 laugh. " How couldn't you ? Notice it now, 
 then. Go up to him ! " 
 
 He crossed at last to the staircase, but at the 
 foot he stopped again. " Will you wait for 
 me?" 
 
 He had such an air of proposing a bargain, 
 of making the wait a condition, that she had to
 
 338 COVERING END 
 
 look it well in the face. The result of her doing 
 so, however, was apparently a strong sense that 
 she could give him no pledge. Her silence, after 
 a moment, expressed that ; but, for a further 
 emphasis, moving away, she sank suddenly into 
 the chair she had already occupied and in 
 which, serious again and very upright, she con- 
 tinued to withhold her promise. "Go up to 
 him ! " she simply repeated. He obeyed, with 
 an abrupt turn, mounting briskly enough several 
 steps, but pausing midway and looking back 
 at her as if he were after all irresolute. He was 
 in fact so much so that, at the sight of her still 
 in her chair and alone by his cold hearth, he 
 descended a few steps again and seemed, with 
 too much decidedly on his mind, on the point 
 of breaking out. She had sat a minute in such 
 thought, figuring him clearly as gone, that at 
 the sound of his return she sprang up with a 
 protest. This checked him afresh, and he re- 
 mained where he had paused, still on the ascent 
 and exchanging with her a look to which neither 
 party was inspired, oddly enough, to contribute 
 a word. It struck him, without words, at all 
 events, as enough, and he now took his upward 
 course at such a pace that he presently disap- 
 peared. She listened awhile to his retreating
 
 COVERING END 339 
 
 tread ; then her own, on the old flags of the hall, 
 became rapid, though, it may perhaps be added, 
 directed to no visible end. It conveyed her, in 
 the great space, from point to point, but she now 
 for the first time moved there without attention 
 and without joy, her course determined by a series 
 of such inward throbs as might have been the 
 suppressed beats of a speech. A real observer, had 
 such a monster been present, would have followed 
 this tacit evolution from sign to sign and from 
 shade to shade. "Why didn't he tell me all? 
 But it was none of my business ! ^What does 
 he mean to do? What should he do but what 
 he has done? And what can he do, when he's 
 so deeply committed, when he's practically en- 
 gaged, when he's just the same as married 
 and buried ? The thing for me to * do ' is just 
 to pull up short and bundle out : to remove 
 from the scene they encumber the numerous 
 fragments well, of what?" 
 
 Her thought was plainly arrested by the sight 
 of Cora Prodmore, who, returning from the gar- 
 den, reappeared first in the court and then in 
 the open doorway. Mrs. Gracedew's was a 
 thought, however, that, even when desperate, 
 was never quite vanquished, and it found a pre- 
 sentable public solution in the pieces of the vase
 
 340 COVERING END 
 
 smashed by drivers and just then, on the table 
 where he had laid them, catching her eye. " Of 
 my old Chelsea pot ! " Her gay, sad headshake 
 as she took one of them up pronounced for 
 Cora's benefit its funeral oration. She laid the 
 morsel thoughtfully down, while her visitor 
 seemed with simple dismay to read the story.
 
 VI 
 
 "HAS he been breaking ?" the girl asked 
 
 in horror. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew laughingly tapped her heart. 
 " Yes, we've had a scene ! He went up again 
 to your father." 
 
 Cora was disconcerted. " Papa's not there. 
 He just came down to me by the other way." 
 
 " Then he can join you here," said Mrs. Grace- 
 dew with instant resignation. "I'm going." 
 
 "Just when I've come back to you at the 
 risk," Cora made bold to throw off, "of again 
 interrupting, though I really hoped he had gone, 
 your conversation with Captain Yule ? " 
 
 But Mrs. Gracedew let the ball quite drop. 
 "I've nothing to say to Captain Yule." 
 
 Cora picked it up for another toss. "You 
 had a good deal to say a few minutes ago ! " 
 
 "Well, I've said it, and it's over. I've noth- 
 ing more to say at all," Mrs. Gracedew insisted. 
 But her announcement of departure left her on 
 341
 
 342 COVERING END 
 
 this occasion, as each of its predecessors had 
 done, with a last, with indeed a fresh, solicitude. 
 " What has become of my delightful ' party ' ? " 
 
 " They've been dismissed, through the grounds, 
 by the other door. But they mentioned," the girl 
 pursued, "the probable arrival of a fresh lot." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew showed on this such a revival 
 of interest as fairly amounted to yearning. 
 " Why, what times you have ! You" she never- 
 theless promptly decreed, "must take the fresh 
 lot since the house is now practically yours ! " 
 
 Poor Cora looked blank. " Mine ? " 
 
 Her companion matched her stare. " Why, 
 if you're going to marry Captain Yule." 
 
 Cora coloured, in a flash, to the eyes. " I'm 
 not going to marry Captain Yule ! " 
 
 Her friend as quickly paled again. " Why on 
 earth then did you tell me only ten minutes 
 ago that you were ? " 
 
 Cora could only look bewildered at the charge. 
 "I told you nothing of the sort. I only told 
 you" she was almost indignantly positive 
 " that he had been ordered me ! " 
 
 It sent Mrs. Gracedew off; she moved away 
 to indulge an emotion that presently put on the 
 form of extravagant mirth. "Like a dose of 
 medicine or a course of baths ? "
 
 COVERING END 343 
 
 The girl's gravity and lucidity sustained them- 
 selves. "As a remedy for the single life." Oh, 
 she had mastered the matter now ! " But I 
 won't take him ! " 
 
 "Ah, then, why didn't you let me know?" 
 Mrs. Graced ew panted. 
 
 " I was on the very point of it when he came 
 in and interrupted us." Cora clearly felt she 
 might be wicked, but was at least not stupid. 
 "It's just to let you know that I'm here now." 
 
 Ah, the difference it made ! This difference, 
 for Mrs. Gracedew, suddenly shimmered in all 
 the place, and her companion's fixed eyes caught 
 in her face the reflection of it. " Excuse me I 
 misunderstood. I somehow took for granted 
 ! " She stopped, a trifle awkwardly sud- 
 denly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had 
 inevitably seen it. 
 
 "You took for granted I'd jump at him? 
 Well, you can take it for granted I won't ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it 
 sympathetically. " You prefer the single life ? " 
 
 "No but I don't prefer him!" Cora was 
 crystal-bright. 
 
 Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first 
 almost blinding ; it took Mrs. Gracedew a 
 moment to distinguish which she then did,
 
 344 COVERING END 
 
 however, with immense eagerness. " You prefer 
 someone else?" Cora's promptitude dropped at 
 this, and, starting to hear it, as you might well 
 have seen, for the first time publicly phrased, she 
 abruptly moved away. A minute's sense of her 
 scruple was enough for Mrs. Gracedew : this was 
 proved by the tone of soft remonstrance and high 
 benevolence with which that lady went on. She 
 had looked very hard, first, at one of the old war- 
 riors hung on the old wall, and almost spoke as if 
 he represented their host. " He seems remarkably 
 clever." 
 
 Cora, at something in the sound, quite jumped 
 about. "Then why don't you marry him your- 
 self?" 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew gave a sort of happy sigh. 
 " Well, I've got fifty reasons ! I rather think 
 one of them must be that he hasn't happened to 
 ask me." 
 
 It was a speech, however, that her visitor 
 could easily better. " I haven't got fifty reasons, 
 but I have got one." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew smiled as if it were indeed a 
 stroke of wit. " You mean your case is one of 
 those in which safety is not in numbers ? " And 
 then on Cora's visibly not understanding : " It is 
 when reasons are bad that one needs so many ! "
 
 COVERING BND 34,5 
 
 The proposition was too general for the girl to 
 embrace, but the simplicity of her answer was 
 far from spoiling it. " My reason is awfully 
 good." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. "I 
 see. An older friend." 
 
 Cora listened as at a warning sound ; yet she 
 had by this time practically let herself go, and it 
 took but Mrs. Gracedew's extended encouraging 
 hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the 
 whole thing out. "I've been trying this hour, 
 in my terrible need of advice, to tell you about 
 him ! " It came in a small clear torrent, a soft 
 tumble-out of sincerity. "After we parted 
 you and I at the station, he suddenly turned 
 up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him 
 which gave you time to get here before me and 
 of which my father is in a state of ignorance 
 that I don't know whether to regard as desirable 
 or dreadful." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have 
 been, for her face, the old family solicitor. " You 
 want me then to inform your father?" It was 
 a wonderful intonation. 
 
 Poor Cora, for that matter too, might suddenly 
 have become under this touch the prodigal with 
 a list of debts. She seemed an instant to look out
 
 346 COVERING END 
 
 of a blurred office window-pane at a grey Lon- 
 don sky ; then she broke away. " I really don't 
 know what I want. I think," she honestly ad- 
 mitted, "I just want kindness." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew's expression might have hinted 
 but not for too long that Bedford Row was 
 an odd place to apply for it ; she appeared for 
 an instant to make the revolving office-chair 
 creak. " What do you mean by kindness ? " 
 
 Cora was a model client she perfectly knew. 
 "I mean help." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew closed an inkstand with a clap 
 and locked a couple of drawers. "What do 
 you mean by help ? " 
 
 The client's inevitable answer seemed to perch 
 on the girl's lips : " A thousand pounds." But 
 it came out in another, in a much more charm- 
 ing form. "I mean that I love him." 
 
 The family solicitor got up : it was a high 
 figure. " And does he love you ? " 
 
 Cora hesitated. "Ask him." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew weighed the necessity. 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 "Waiting." And the girl's glance, removed 
 from her companion and wandering aloft and 
 through space, gave the scale of his patience. 
 
 Her adviser, however, required the detail. 
 "But where?"
 
 COVERING END 347 
 
 Cora briefly demurred again. " In that 
 funny old grotto." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew thought. "Funny?" 
 
 " Half-way from the park gate. It's very 
 nice!'" Cora more eagerly added. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew continued to reflect. "Oh, I 
 know it ! " She spoke as if she had known it 
 most of her life. 
 
 Her tone encouraged her client. "Then will 
 you see him ? " 
 
 "No." This time it was almost dry. 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "No. If you want help " Mrs. Grace- 
 dew, still musing, explained. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Well you want a great deal." 
 
 " Oh, so much ! " Cora but too woefully took 
 it in. "I want," she quavered, "all there 
 is!" 
 
 "Well you shall have it." 
 
 " All there is ? " she convulsively held her 
 to it. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew had finally mastered it. "I'll 
 see your father." 
 
 " You dear, delicious lady I " Her young 
 friend had again encompassed her ; but, passive 
 and preoccupied, she showed some of the chill
 
 348 COVERING END 
 
 of apprehension. It was indeed as if to meet 
 this that Cora went earnestly on: "He's in- 
 tensely sympathetic ! " 
 
 " Your father ? " Mrs. Gracedew had her 
 reserves. 
 
 "Oh, no the other person. I so believe in 
 him ! " Cora cried. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked at her a moment. " Then 
 so do I and I like him for believing in you." 
 
 " Oh, he does that," the girl hurried on, " far 
 more than Captain Yule I could see just with 
 one glance that he doesn't at all. Papa has of 
 course seen the young man I mean, but we've 
 been so sure papa would hate it that we've had 
 to be awfully careful. He's the son of the 
 richest man at Bellborough, he's Granny's god- 
 son, and he'll inherit his father's business, which 
 is simply immense. Oh, from the point of view 
 of the things he's in " and Cora found her- 
 self sharp on this " he's quite as good as papa 
 himself. He has been away for three days, and 
 if he met me at the station, where, on his way 
 back, he has to change, it was by the merest 
 chance in the world. I wouldn't love him," she 
 brilliantly wound up, "if he wasn't nice." 
 
 " A man's always nice if you will love him ! " 
 Mrs. Gracedew laughed.
 
 COVERING END 349 
 
 Her young friend more than met it. " He's 
 nicer still if he 'will' love you!" 
 
 But Mrs. Gracedew kept her head. " Nicer of 
 course than if he won't ! But are you sure this 
 gentleman does love you ? " 
 
 "As sure as that the other one doesn't." 
 
 "Ah, but the other one doesn't know you." 
 
 " Yes, thank goodness and never shall ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew watched her a little, but on the 
 girl's meeting her eyes turned away with a quick 
 laugh. " You mean of course till it's too late." 
 
 " Altogether ! " Cora spoke as with quite the 
 measure of the time. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, revolving a moment in silence, 
 appeared to accept her showing. " Then what's 
 the matter? " she impatiently asked. 
 
 " The matter ? " 
 
 "Your father's objection to the gentleman in 
 the grotto." 
 
 Cora now for the first time faltered. " His 
 name." 
 
 This for a moment pulled up her friend, in 
 whom, however, relief seemed to contend with 
 alarm. " Only his name?" 
 
 " Yes, but " Cora's eyes rolled. 
 
 Her companion invitingly laughed. "But it's 
 enough ? "
 
 350 COVERING END 
 
 Her roll confessingly fixed itself. " Not enough 
 that's just the trouble ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked kindly curious. " What 
 then is it?" 
 
 Cora faced the music. " Pegg." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew stared. " Nothing else ? " 
 
 "Nothing to speak of." The girl was quite 
 candid now. "Hall." 
 
 " Nothing before ? " 
 
 "Not a letter." 
 
 "Hall Pegg?" Mrs. Gracedew had winced, 
 but she quickly recovered herself, and, for a 
 further articulation, appeared, from delicacy, to 
 form the sound only with her mind. The sound 
 she formed with her lips was, after an instant, 
 simply " Oh ! " 
 
 It was to the combination of the spoken and 
 the unspoken that Cora desperately replied. " It 
 sounds like a hat-rack I " 
 
 " ' Hall Pegg ' ? ' Hall Pegg' ? " Mrs. Gracedew 
 now made it, like a questionable coin, ring upon 
 the counter. But it lay there as lead and without, 
 for a moment, her taking it up again. " How 
 many has your father ? " she inquired instead. 
 
 " How many names ? " Miss Prodmore seemed 
 dimly to see that there was no hope in that. " He 
 somehow makes out five."
 
 COVERING END 351 
 
 " Oh, that's too many ! " Mrs. Gracedew jeer- 
 ingly declared. 
 
 "Papa unfortunately doesn't think so, when 
 Captain Yule, I believe, has six." 
 
 " Six ? " Mrs. Gracedew, alert, looked as if 
 that might be different. 
 
 " Papa, in the morning-room, told me them "all." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew visibly considered, then for a mo- 
 ment dropped Mr. Pegg. " And what are they ! " 
 
 "Oh, all sorts. 'Marmaduke Clement '" 
 
 Cora tried to recall. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, however, had already checked 
 her. "I see 'Marmaduke Clement' will do." 
 She appeared for a minute intent, but, as with an 
 energetic stoop, she picked up Mr. Pegg. "But 
 so will yours," she said, with decision. 
 
 " Mine ? you mean his ! " 
 
 "The same thing what you'll be." 
 
 " Mrs. Hall Pegg I " Cora tried it, with reso- 
 lution, loudly. 
 
 It fell a little flat in the noble space, but Mrs. 
 Gracedew's manner quickly covered it. "It 
 won't make you a bit less charming." 
 
 Cora wondered she hoped. "Only for papa." 
 
 And what was he? Mrs. Gracedew by this 
 time seemed assentingly to ask. "Never for 
 me!" she soothingly declared.
 
 352 COVERING END 
 
 Cora took this in with deep thanks that gripped 
 and patted her companion's hand. " You accept 
 it more than gracefully. But if you could only 
 make him ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was all concentration. " * Him ' ? 
 Mr. Pegg?" 
 
 "No he naturally has to accept it. But 
 
 She looked harder still at this greater feat, then 
 seemed to see light. " Well, it will be difficult 
 but I will." 
 
 Doubt paled before it. " Oh, you heavenly 
 thing ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew after an instant, sustained by 
 this appreciation, went a step further. " And I'll 
 make him say he does ! " 
 
 Cora closed her eyes with the dream of it. 
 " Oh, if I could only hear him ! " 
 
 Her benefactress had at last run it to earth. 
 "It will be enough if J do." 
 
 Cora quickly considered; then, with prompt 
 accommodation, gave the comfortable measure of 
 her faith. "Yes I think it will." She was 
 quite ready to retire. "I'll give you time." 
 
 "Thank you," said Mrs. Gracedew; "but 
 before you give me time give me something 
 better."
 
 COVERING END 353 
 
 This pulled the girl up a little, as if in part- 
 ing with her secret she had parted with her all. 
 " Something better ? " 
 
 "If I help you, you know," Mrs. Gracedew 
 explained, " you must help me." 
 
 " But how ? " 
 
 " By a clear assurance. " The charming woman's 
 fine face now gave the real example of clearness. 
 " That if Captain Yule should propose to you, you 
 would unconditionally refuse him." 
 
 Cora flushed with the surprise of its being only 
 that. " With my dying breath ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew scanned her robust vitality. 
 " Will you make it even a promise ? " 
 
 The girl looked about her in solid certainty. 
 " Do you want me to sign ? " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was quick. " No, don't sign ! " 
 
 Yet Cora was so ready to oblige. " Then what 
 shall I do?" 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew turned away, but after a few 
 vague steps faced her again. " Kiss me." 
 
 Cora flew to her arms, and the compact had 
 scarce been sealed before the younger of the par- 
 ties was already at the passage to the front. " We 
 meet of course at the station." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew thought. " If all goes well. 
 But where shall you be meanwhile?" 
 
 2A
 
 354 COVERING END 
 
 Her confederate had no need to think. " Can't 
 you guess ? " 
 
 The bang of the house-door, the next minute, 
 so helped the answer to the riddle as fairly to 
 force it, when she found herself alone, from her 
 lips. " At that funny old grotto ? Well," she 
 sighed, " I like funny old grottos ! " She found 
 herself alone, however, only for a minute ; Mr. 
 Prodmore's formidable presence had darkened the 
 door from the court.
 
 VII 
 
 " MY daughter's not here ? " he demanded from 
 the threshold. 
 
 "Your daughter's not here." She had rapidly 
 got under arms. " But it's a convenience to me, 
 Mr. Prodmore, that you are, for I've something 
 very particular to ask you." 
 
 Her interlocutor crossed straight to the morn- 
 ing-room. " I shall be delighted to answer your 
 question, but I must first put my hand on Miss 
 Prodmore." This hand the next instant stayed 
 itself on the latch, and he appealed to the amiable 
 visitor. "Unless indeed she's occupied in there 
 with Captain Yule?" 
 
 The amiable visitor met the appeal. " I don't 
 think she's occupied anywhere with Captain 
 Yule." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore came straight away from the 
 door. " Then where the deuce is Captain Yule ? " 
 
 The amiable visitor turned a trifle less direct. 
 *' His absence, for which I'm responsible, is just 
 what renders the inquiry I speak of to you possi- 
 355
 
 356 COVERING END 
 
 ble." She had already assumed a most inquiring 
 air, yet it was soon clear that she needed every 
 advantage her manner could give her. "What 
 will you take ? what will you take ?" 
 
 It had the sound, as she faltered, of a general 
 question, and Mr. Prodmore raised his eyebrows. 
 "Take? Nothing, thank you I've just had a 
 cup of tea." Then suddenly, as if on the broad 
 hint : " Won't you have one ? " 
 
 "Yes, with pleasure but not yet." She 
 looked about her again ; she was now at close 
 quarters and, concentrated, anxious, pressed her 
 hand a moment to her brow. 
 
 This struck her companion. " Don't you 
 think you'd be better for it immediately ? " 
 
 "No." She was positive. "No." Her eyes 
 consciously wandered. "I want to know how 
 you'd value " 
 
 He took her, as his own followed them, more 
 quickly up, expanding in the presence of such 
 a tribute from a real connoisseur. " One of these 
 charming old things that take your fancy ? " 
 
 She looked at him straight now. " They all 
 take my fancy ! " 
 
 "All?" He enjoyed it as the joke of a rich 
 person the kind of joke he sometimes made 
 himself.
 
 COVERING END 357 
 
 " Every single one ! " said Mrs. Gracedew. 
 Then with still a finer shade of the familiar : 
 " Should you be willing to treat, Mr. Prodmore, 
 for your interest in this property ? " 
 
 He threw back his head : she had scattered 
 over the word " interest " such a friendly, faded 
 colour. She was either not joking or was rich 
 indeed ; and there was a place always kept in 
 his conversation for the arrival of money, as 
 there is always a box in a well-appointed theatre 
 for that of royalty. " Am I to take it from you 
 then that you know about my interest ?" 
 
 " Everything ! " said Mrs. Gracedew with a 
 world of wit. 
 
 " Excuse me, madam ! " he himself was now 
 more reserved. " You don't know everything 
 if you don't know that my interest consider- 
 able as it might well have struck you has just 
 ceased to exist. I've given it up " Mr. Prod- 
 more softened the blow "for a handsome 
 equivalent." 
 
 The blow fell indeed light enough. "You 
 mean for a handsome son-in-law ? " 
 
 "It will be by some such description as the 
 term you use that I shall doubtless, in the 
 future, permit myself, in the common course, to 
 allude to Captain Yule. Unless indeed I call him
 
 358 COVERING END 
 
 " But Mr. Prodmore dropped the bolder 
 
 thought. "It will depend on what he calls me." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew covered him a moment with 
 the largeness of her charity. "Won't it depend 
 a little on what your daughter herself calls him?" 
 
 Mr. Prodmore seriously considered. "No. 
 That," he declared with delicacy, "will be be- 
 tween the happy pair." 
 
 "Am I to take it from you then I adopt 
 your excellent phrase," Mrs. Gracedew said 
 " that Miss Prodmore has already accepted him ? " 
 
 Her companion, with his head still in the air, 
 seemed to signify that he simply put it down 
 on the table and that she could take it or not 
 as she liked. " Her character formed by my 
 assiduous care enables me to locate her, I may 
 say even to time her, from moment to moment." 
 His massive watch, as he opened it, further 
 sustained him in this process. " It's my as- 
 sured conviction that she's accepting him while 
 we stand here." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was so affected by his assured 
 conviction that, with an odd, inarticulate sound, 
 she forbore to stand longer she rapidly moved 
 away, taking one of the brief excursions of step 
 and sense that had been for her, from the first, 
 under the noble roof, so many dumb but decisive
 
 COVERING END 359 
 
 communions. But it was soon over, and she 
 floated back on a wave that showed her to be, 
 since she had let herself go, by this time quite 
 in the swing and describing a considerable curve. 
 " Dear Mr. Prodmore, why are you so impru- 
 dent as to make your daughter afraid of you ? 
 You should have taught her to confide in you. 
 She has clearly shown me," she almost sooth- 
 ingly pursued, "that she can confide." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, however, suddenly starting, 
 looked far from soothed. " She confides in 
 you f " 
 
 " You may take it from me ! " Mrs. Gracedew 
 laughed. "Let me suggest that, as fortune 
 has thrown us together a minute, you follow 
 her good example." She put out a reassuring 
 hand she could perfectly show him the way. 
 "Tell me, for instance, the ground of your 
 objection to poor Mr. Pegg. I mean Mr. Pegg 
 of Bellborough, Mr. Hall Pegg, the godson of 
 your daughter's grandmother and the associate 
 of his father in their flourishing house ; to 
 whom (as he is to it and to her) Miss Prodmore's 
 devotedly attached." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore had in the course of this speech 
 availed himself of the support of the nearest 
 chair, where, in spite of his subsidence, he
 
 360 COVERING END 
 
 appeared in his amazement twice his natural size. 
 " It has gone so far as that f " 
 
 She rose before him as if in triumph. "It 
 has gone so far that you had better let it go 
 the rest of the way ! " 
 
 He had lost breath, but he had positively 
 gained dignity. " It's too monstrous, to have 
 plotted to keep me in the dark ! " 
 
 "Why, it's only when you're kept in the 
 dark that your daughter's kept in the light ! " 
 She argued it with a candour that might have 
 served for brilliancy. "It's at her own earnest 
 request that I plead to you for her liberty of 
 choice. She's an honest girl perhaps even a 
 peculiar girl ; and she's not a baby. You over-do, 
 I think, the nursing. She has a perfect right 
 to her preference." 
 
 Poor Mr. Prodmore couldn't help taking it 
 from her, and, this being the case, he still took 
 it in the most convenient way. "And pray 
 haven't I a perfect right to mine?" he asked 
 from his chair. 
 
 She fairly seemed to serve it up to him to 
 put down the dish with a flourish. "Not at 
 her expense. You expect her to give up too 
 much." 
 
 "And what has she," he appealed, "expected
 
 COVERING END 361 
 
 me to give up? What but the desire of my 
 heart and the dream of my life ? Captain Yule 
 announced to me but a few minutes since his 
 intention to offer her his hand." 
 
 She faced him on it as over the table. " Well, 
 if he does, I think he'll simply find " 
 
 "Find what?" They looked at each other 
 hard. 
 
 "Why, that she won't have it." 
 
 Oh, Mr. Prodmore now sprang up. " She 
 will!" 
 
 " She won't ! " Mrs. Gracedew more distinctly 
 repeated. 
 
 " She shall ! " returned her adversary, making 
 for the staircase with the evident sense of where 
 reinforcement might be most required. 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, however, with a spring, was 
 well before him. " She shan't ! " She spoke 
 with positive passion and practically so barred 
 the way that he stood arrested and bewildered, 
 and they faced each other, for a flash, like 
 enemies. But it all went out, on her part, in a 
 flash too in a sudden wonderful smile. "Now 
 tell me how much ! " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore continued to glare the sweat 
 was on his brow. But while he slowly wiped it 
 with a pocket-handkerchief of splendid scarlet
 
 362 COVERING END 
 
 silk, he remained so silent that he would have 
 had for a spectator the effect of meeting in a 
 manner her question. More formally to answer 
 it he had at last to turn away. " How can I tell 
 you anything so preposterous ? " 
 
 She was all ready to inform him. " Simply 
 by computing the total amount to which, for your 
 benefit, this unhappy estate is burdened." He 
 listened with his back presented, but that ap- 
 peared to strike her, as she fixed this expanse, 
 as an encouragement to proceed. " If I've 
 troubled you by showing you that your specula- 
 tion is built on the sand, let me atone for it by 
 my eagerness to take off your hands an invest- 
 ment from which you derive so little profit." 
 
 He at last gave her his attention, but quite as 
 if there were nothing in it. " And pray what 
 profit will you derive ? " 
 
 " Ah, that's my own secret ! " She would show 
 him as well no glimpse of it her laugh but 
 rattled the box. " I want this house ! " 
 
 " So do I, damn me ! " he roundly returned ; 
 " and that's why I've practically paid for it ! " 
 He stuffed away his pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 There was nevertheless something in her that 
 could hold him, and it came out, after an instant, 
 quietly and reasonably enough. " I'll practically
 
 COVERING END 363 
 
 pay for it, Mr. Prodmore if you'll only tell me 
 your figure." 
 
 " My figure ? " 
 
 "Your figure." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore waited then removed his eyes 
 from her face. He appeared to have waited on 
 purpose to let her hope of a soft answer fall from 
 a greater height. " My figure would be quite my 
 own ! " 
 
 "Then it will match, in that respect," Mrs. 
 Gracedew laughed, " this overture, which is quite 
 my own ! As soon as you've let me know it I 
 cable to Missoura Top to have the money sent 
 right out to you." 
 
 Mr. Prodmore surveyed in a superior manner 
 this artless picture of a stroke of business. "You 
 imagine that having the money sent right out to 
 me will make you owner of this place ? " 
 
 She herself, with her head on one side, studied 
 her sketch and seemed to twirl her pencil. " No 
 not quite. But I'll settle the rest with Cap- 
 tain Yule." 
 
 Her companion looked, over his white waist- 
 coat, at his large tense shoes, the patent-leather 
 shine of which so flashed propriety back at him 
 that he became, the next moment, doubly erect on 
 it. " Captain Yule has nothing to sell."
 
 364 COVERING END 
 
 She received the remark with surprise. " Then 
 what have you been trying to buy ? " 
 
 She had touched in himself even a sharper 
 spring. "Do you mean to say," he cried, "you 
 want to buy that?" She stared at his queer 
 emphasis, which was intensified by a queer gri- 
 mace ; then she turned from him with a change 
 of colour and an ejaculation that led to nothing 
 more, after a few seconds, than a somewhat 
 conscious silence a silence of which Mr. Prod- 
 more made use to follow up his unanswered 
 question with another. "Is your proposal that 
 I should transfer my investment to you for the 
 mere net amount of it your conception of a fair 
 bargain ? " 
 
 This second inquiry, however, she could, as 
 she slowly came round, substantially meet. 
 "Pray, then, what is yours?" 
 
 " Mine would be, not that I should simply 
 get my money back, but that I should get the 
 effective value of the house." 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew considered it. "But isn't 
 the effective value of the house just what your 
 money expresses ? " 
 
 The lid of his hard left eye, the harder of the 
 two, just dipped with the effect of a wink. " No, 
 madam. It's just what yours does. It's more-
 
 COVEB1NG END 365 
 
 over just what your lips have already expressed 
 so distinctly ! " 
 
 She clearly did her best to follow him. " To 
 those people when I showed the place off ? " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore laughed. "You seemed to be 
 taking bids then ! " 
 
 She was candid, but earnest. "Taking 
 them?" 
 
 " Oh, like an auctioneer ! You ran it up high ! " 
 And Mr. Prodmore laughed again. 
 
 She turned a little pale, but it added to her 
 brightness. "I certainly did, if saying it was 
 charming " 
 
 " Charming ? " Mr. Prodmore broke in. " You 
 said it was magnificent. You said it was unique. 
 That was your very word. You said it was the 
 perfect specimen of its class in England." He 
 was more than accusatory, he was really crush- 
 ing. " Oh, you got in deep ! " 
 
 It was indeed an indictment, and her smile 
 was perhaps now rather set. "Possibly. But 
 taunting me with my absurd high spirits and 
 the dreadful liberties I took doesn't in the least 
 tell me how deep you're in ! " 
 
 " For you, Mrs. Gracedew ? " He took a few 
 steps, looking at his shoes again and as if to give 
 her time to plead since he wished to be quite
 
 366 COVERING END 
 
 fair that it was not for her. "I'm in to the 
 tune of fifty thousand." 
 
 She was silent, on this announcement, so long 
 that he once more faced her ; but if what he 
 showed her in doing so at last made her speak, 
 it also took the life from her tone. " That's a 
 great deal of money, Mr. Prodmore." 
 
 The tone didn't matter, but only the truth it 
 expressed, which he so thoroughly liked to hear. 
 " So I've often had occasion to say to myself ! " 
 
 " If it's a large sum for you, then," said Mrs. 
 Gracedew, "it's a still larger one for me." She 
 sank into a chair with a vague melancholy ; 
 such a mass loomed huge, and she sat down 
 before it as a solitary herald, resigning himself 
 with a sigh to wait, might have leaned against 
 a tree before a besieged city. "We women" 
 she wished to conciliate " have more modest 
 ideas." 
 
 But Mr. Prodmore would scarce condescend 
 to parley. "Is it as a 'modest idea' that you 
 describe your extraordinary intrusion ?" 
 
 His question scarce reached her; she was so 
 lost for the moment in the sense of innocent 
 community with her sex. "I mean I think we 
 measure things often rather more exactly." 
 
 There would have been no doubt of Mr. Prod-
 
 COVEKING END 367 
 
 more's very different community as he rudely 
 replied : " Then you measured this thing exactly 
 half an hour ago ! " 
 
 It was a long way to go back, but Mrs. Grace- 
 dew, in her seat, musingly made the journey, 
 from which she then suddenly returned with a 
 harmless, indeed quite a happy, memento. " Was 
 I very grotesque ? " 
 
 He demurred. " Grotesque ? " 
 
 " I mean did I go on about it? " 
 
 Mr. Prodmore would have no general descrip- 
 tions ; he was specific, he was vivid. " You 
 banged the desk. You raved. You shrieked." 
 
 This was a note she appeared indulgently, 
 almost tenderly, to recognise. "We do shriek 
 at Missoura Top ! " 
 
 " I don't know what you do at Missoura Top, 
 but I know what you did at Covering End ! " 
 
 She warmed at last to his tone. " So do / 
 then ! I surprised you. You weren't at all 
 prepared " 
 
 He took her briskly up. "No and I'm not 
 prepared yet ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew could quite see it. "Yes, 
 you're too astonished." 
 
 "My astonishment's my own affair," he re- 
 torted " not less so than my memory ! "
 
 368 COVERING END 
 
 " Oh, I yield to your memory," said the charm- 
 ing woman, " and I confess my extravagance. 
 But quite, you know, as extravagance." 
 
 "I don't at all know," Mr. Prodmore shook 
 it off, "nor what you call extravagance." 
 
 "Why, banging the desk. Raving. Shriek- 
 ing. I over-did it," she exclaimed; "I wanted 
 to please you ! " 
 
 She had too happy a beauty, as she sat in her 
 high-backed chair, to have been condemned to 
 say that to any man without a certain effect. 
 The effect on Mr. Prodmore was striking. " So 
 you said," he sternly inquired, " what you didn't 
 believe?" 
 
 She flushed with the avowal. "Yes for you." 
 
 He looked at her hard. "For me?" 
 
 Under his eye for her flush continued she 
 slowly got up. " And for those good people." 
 
 " Oh ! " he sounded most sarcastic. " Should 
 you like me to call them back ? " 
 
 " No." She was still gay enough, but very 
 decided. " I took them in." 
 
 " And now you want to take me? " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Prodmore ! " she almost pitifully, 
 but not quite adequately, moaned. 
 
 He appeared to feel he had gone a little far. 
 " Well, if we're not what you say "
 
 COVERING END 369 
 
 " Yes ? " she looked up askance at the stroke. 
 
 " Why the devil do you want us ? " The ques- 
 tion rang out and was truly for the poor lady, as 
 the quick suffusion of her eyes showed, a chal- 
 lenge it would take more time than he left her 
 properly to pick up. He left her in fact no time 
 at all before he went on : " Why the devil did 
 you say you'd offer fifty ? " 
 
 She looked quite wan and seemed to wonder. 
 " Did I say that?" She could only let his 
 challenge lie. " It was a figure of speech ! " 
 
 " Then that's the kind of figure we're talking 
 about ! " Mr. Prodmore's sharpness would have 
 struck an auditor as the more effective that, on 
 the heels of this thrust, seeing the ancient but- 
 ler reappear, he dropped the victim of it as 
 comparatively unimportant and directed his 
 fierceness instantly to Chivers, who mildly 
 gaped at him from the threshold of the court. 
 "Have you seen Miss Prodmore? If you 
 haven't, find her ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew addressed their visitor in a 
 very different tone, though with the full author- 
 ity of her benevolence. "You won't, my dear 
 man." To Mr. Prodmore also she continued 
 bland. " I happen to know she has gone for a 
 walk." 
 
 2B
 
 370 COVERING END 
 
 "A walk alone?" Mr. Prodmore gasped. 
 
 "No not alone." Mrs. Gracedew looked 
 at Chivers with a vague smile of appeal for 
 help, but he could only give her, from under 
 his bent old brow, the blank decency of his 
 wonder. It seemed to make her feel afresh 
 that she was, after all, alone so that in her 
 loneliness, which had also its fine sad charm, 
 she risked another brush with their formidable 
 friend. " Cora has gone with Mr. Pegg." 
 
 " Pegg has been here ? " 
 
 It was like a splash in a full basin, but she 
 launched the whole craft. " He walked with 
 her from the station." 
 
 "When she arrived?" Mr. Prodmore rose 
 like outraged Neptune. "That's why she was 
 so late?" 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew assented. "Why I got here 
 first. I get everywhere first ! " she bravely 
 laughed. 
 
 Mr. Prodmore looked round him in purple 
 dismay it was so clearly a question for him 
 where he should get, and what ! " In which 
 direction did they go ? " he imperiously asked. 
 
 His rudeness was too evident to be more 
 than lightly recognised. " I think I must let 
 you ascertain for yourself ! "
 
 COVERING END 371 
 
 All he could do then was to shout it to 
 Chivers. " Call my carriage, you ass ! " After 
 which, as the old man melted into the vestibule, 
 he dashed about blindly for his hat, pounced 
 upon it and seemed, furious but helpless, on 
 the point of hurling it at his contradictress as 
 a gage of battle. "So you abetted and pro- 
 tected this wicked, low intrigue?" 
 
 She had something in her face now that was 
 indifferent to any violence. "You're too dis- 
 appointed to see your real interest: oughtn't I 
 therefore in common charity to point it out to 
 you?" 
 
 He faced her question so far as to treat it as 
 one. " What do you know of my disappoint- 
 ment?" 
 
 There was something in his very harshness 
 that even helped her, for it added at this 
 moment to her sense of making out in his 
 narrowed glare a couple of tears of rage. "I 
 know everything." 
 
 " What do you know of my real interest ? " 
 he went on as if he had not heard her. 
 
 " I know enough for my purpose which is 
 to offer you a handsome condition. I think it's 
 not I who have protected the happy under- 
 standing that you call by so ugly a name ; it's
 
 372 COVERING END 
 
 the happy understanding that has put me " 
 she gained confidence "well, in a position. 
 Do drive after them, if you like but catch 
 up with them only to forgive them. If you'll 
 do that, I'll pay your price." 
 
 The particular air with which, a minute after 
 Mrs. Gracedew had spoken these words, Mr. 
 Prodmore achieved a transfer of his attention 
 to the inside of his hat this special shade of 
 majesty would have taxed the descriptive re- 
 sources of the most accomplished reporter. It 
 is none the less certain that he appeared for 
 some time absorbed in that receptacle appeared 
 at last to breathe into it hard. " What do you 
 call my price ? " 
 
 "Why, the sum you just mentioned fifty 
 thousand ! " Mrs. Gracedew feverishly quavered. 
 
 He looked at her as if stupefied. " That's not 
 my price and it never for a moment was ! " 
 If derision can be dry, Mr. Prodmore's was of 
 the driest. "Besides," he rang out, "my price 
 is up ! " 
 
 She caught it with a long wail. " Up ? " 
 
 Oh, he let her have it now ! " Seventy thou- 
 sand." 
 
 She turned away overwhelmed, but still with 
 voice for her despair. " Oh, deary me ! "
 
 COVERING END 373 
 
 Mr. Prodmore was already at the door, from 
 which he launched his ultimatum. " It's to take 
 or to leave ! " 
 
 She would have had to leave it, perhaps, had 
 not something happened at this moment to nerve 
 her for the effort of staying him with a quick 
 motion. Captain Yule had come into sight on 
 the staircase and, after just faltering at what 
 he himself saw, had marched resolutely enough 
 down. She watched him arrive watched him 
 with an attention that visibly and responsively 
 excited his own ; after which she passed nearer 
 to their companion. " Seventy thousand, then ! " 
 it gleamed between them, in her muffled hiss, 
 as if she had planted a dagger. 
 
 Mr. Prodmore, to do him justice, took his 
 wound in front. " Seventy thousand done ! " 
 And, without another look at Yule, he was pres- 
 ently heard to bang the outer door after him 
 for a sign.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE young man, meanwhile, had approached in 
 surprise. " He's gone ? I've been looking for 
 him ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was out of breath; there was 
 a disturbed whiteness of bosom in her which 
 needed time to subside and which she might 
 have appeared to retreat before him on purpose 
 to veil. " I don't think, you know, that you 
 need him now." 
 
 Clement Yule was mystified. " Now ? " 
 She recovered herself enough to explain made 
 an effort at least to be plausible. "I mean that 
 if you don't mind you must deal with me. 
 I've arranged with Mr. Prodmore to take it 
 over." 
 
 Oh, he gave her no help ! "Take what over ? " 
 She looked all about as if not quite thinking 
 what it could be called ; at last, however, she 
 offered with a smile a sort of substitute for a 
 name. " Why, your debt. " 
 374
 
 COVERING END 375 
 
 But he was only the more bewildered. " Can 
 you without arranging with me?" 
 
 She turned it round, but as if merely to oblige 
 him. "That's precisely what I want to do." 
 Then, more brightly, as she thought further : 
 "That is, I mean, I want you to arrange with 
 me. Surely you will," she said encouragingly. 
 
 His own processes, in spite of a marked earnest- 
 ness, were much less rapid. "But if I arrange 
 with anybody " 
 
 " Yes ? " She cheerfully waited. 
 
 " How do I perform my engagement ? " 
 
 " The one to Mr. Prodmore ? " 
 
 He looked surprised at her speaking as if he 
 had half-a-dozen. "Yes that's the worst." 
 
 " Certainly the worst ! " And she gave a 
 happy laugh that made him stare. 
 
 He broke into quite a different one. "You 
 speak as if its being the worst made it the best ! " 
 
 "It does for me. You don't," said Mrs. 
 Gracedew, "perform any engagement." 
 
 He required a moment to take it in ; then 
 something extraordinary leaped into his face. 
 "He lets me off?" 
 
 Ah, she could ring out now ! " He lets you 
 off." 
 
 It lifted him high, but only to drop him with
 
 376 COVERING END 
 
 an audible thud. "Oh, I see I lose my 
 house ! " 
 
 " Dear, no that doesn't follow ! " She spoke 
 as if the absurdity he indicated were the last con- 
 ceivable, but there was a certain want of sharp- 
 ness of edge in her expression of the alternative. 
 "You arrange with me to keep it." 
 
 There was quite a corresponding want, clearly, 
 in the image presented to the Captain of which, 
 for a moment, he seemed with difficulty to follow 
 the contour. " How do I arrange ? " 
 
 " Well, we must think," said Mrs. Gracedew ; 
 "we must wait." She spoke as if this were a 
 detail for which she had not yet had much atten- 
 tion ; only bringing out, however, the next in- 
 stant in an encouraging cry and as if it were 
 by itself almost a solution : " We must find some 
 way ! " She might have been talking to a rea- 
 sonable child. 
 
 But even reasonable children ask too many 
 questions. " Yes and what way can we find ? " 
 Clement Yule, glancing about him, was so struck 
 with the absence of ways that he appeared to 
 remember with something of regret how different 
 it had been before. "With Prodmore it was 
 simple enough. You see I could marry his 
 daughter."
 
 COVERING END 377 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew was silent just long enough for 
 her soft ironic smile to fill the cup of the pause. 
 "Could you?" 
 
 It was as if he had tasted in the words the 
 wine at the brim ; for he gave, under the effect 
 of them, a sudden headshake and an awkward 
 laugh. "Well, never perhaps that exactly 
 when it came to the point. But I had to, you 
 see " It was difficult to say just what. 
 
 She took advantage of it, looking hard, but 
 not seeing at all. "You had to ?" 
 
 "Well," he repeated ruefully, "think a lot 
 about it. You didn't suspect that ? " 
 
 Oh, if he came to suspicions she could only 
 break off ! "Don't ask me too many questions." 
 
 He looked an instant as if he wondered why. 
 "But isn't this just the moment for them?" 
 He fronted her, with a quickness he tried to 
 dissimulate, from the other side. " What did 
 you suppose ? " 
 
 She looked everywhere but into his face. 
 "Why, I supposed you were in distress." 
 
 He was very grave. " About his terms ? " 
 
 " About his terms of course I " she laughed. 
 "Not about his religious opinions." 
 
 His gratitude was too great for gaiety. " You 
 really, in your beautiful sympathy, guessed my 
 fix?"
 
 378 COVERING END 
 
 But she declined to be too solemn. " Dear 
 Captain Yule, it all quite stuck out of you ! " 
 
 "You mean I floundered like a drowning 
 man ? " 
 
 Well, she consented to have meant that. " Till 
 I plunged in ! " 
 
 He appeared there for a few seconds, to see 
 her again take the jump and to listen again to 
 the splash ; then, with an odd, sharp impulse, 
 he turned his back. "You saved me." 
 
 She wouldn't deny it on the contrary. 
 " What a pity, now, / haven't a daughter ! " 
 
 On this he slowly came round again. " What 
 should I do with her ? " 
 
 "You'd treat her, I hope, better than you've 
 treated Miss Prodmore." 
 
 The young man positively coloured. "But 
 I haven't been bad ?" 
 
 The sight of this effect of her small joke 
 produced on Mrs. Gracedew's part an emotion 
 less controllable than any she had yet felt. 
 " Oh, you delightful goose ! " she irrepressibly 
 dropped. 
 
 She made his blush deepen, but the aggrava- 
 tion was a relief. " Of course I'm all right, 
 and there's only one pity in the matter. I've 
 nothing nothing whatever, not a scrap of ser-
 
 COVERING END 379 
 
 vice nor a thing you'd care for to offer you in 
 compensation." 
 
 She looked at him ever so kindly. " I'm not, 
 as they say, 'on the make.'" Never had he 
 been put right with a lighter hand. "I didn't 
 do it for payment." 
 
 "Then what did you do it for?" 
 
 For something, it might have seemed, as her 
 eyes dropped and strayed, that had got brushed 
 into a crevice of the old pavement. "Because 
 I hated Mr. Prodmore." 
 
 He conscientiously demurred. "So much as 
 all that?" 
 
 " Oh, well," she replied impatiently, " of 
 course you also know how much I like the 
 house. My hates and my likes," she subtly 
 explained, "can never live together. I get one 
 of them out. The one this time was that man." 
 
 He showed a candour of interest. "Yes 
 you got him out. Yes I saw him go." And 
 his inner vision appeared to attend for some 
 moments Mr. Prodmore's departure. "But how 
 did you do it?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. Women !" Mrs. 
 
 Gracedew but vaguely sketched it. 
 
 A touch or two, however, for that subject, 
 could of course almost always suffice. " Pre-
 
 380 COVEBING END 
 
 cisely women. May I smoke again?" Clem- 
 ent Yule abruptly asked. 
 
 "Certainly. But I managed Mr. Prodmore," 
 she laughed as he re-lighted, "without ciga- 
 rettes." 
 
 Her companion puffed. " I couldn't manage 
 him." 
 
 "So I saw!" 
 
 " I couldn't get him out." 
 
 " So he saw ! " 
 
 Captain Yule, for a little, lost himself in his 
 smoke. " Where is he gone ? " 
 
 "I haven't the least idea. But I meet him 
 again," she hastened to add "very soon." 
 
 "And when do you meet me?" 
 
 "Why, whenever you'll come to see me." 
 For the twentieth time she gathered herself as 
 if the words she had just spoken were quite 
 her last hand. "At present, you see, I have a 
 train to catch." 
 
 Absorbed in the trivial act that engaged him, 
 he gave her no help. "A train?" 
 
 "Surely. I didn't walk." 
 
 " No ; but even trains ! " His eyes clung 
 
 to her now. " You fly ? " 
 
 "I try to. Good-bye." 
 
 He had got between her and the door of de-
 
 COVERING END 381 
 
 parture quite as, on her attempt to quit him 
 half an hour before, he had anticipated her 
 approach to the stairs ; and in this position he 
 took no notice of her farewell. " I said just 
 now that I had nothing to offer you. But of 
 course I've the house itself." 
 
 " The house ? " She stared. " Why, I've got 
 it?" 
 
 "Got it?" 
 
 "All in my head, I mean. That's all I 
 want." She had not yet, save to Mr. Prod- 
 more, made quite so light of it. 
 
 This had its action in his markedly longer 
 face. " Why, I thought you loved it so ! " 
 
 Ah, she was perfectly consistent. " I love it 
 far too much to deprive you of it." 
 
 Yet Clement Yule could in a fashion meet 
 her. " Oh, it wouldn't be depriving ! " 
 
 She altogether protested. "Not to turn you 
 out ?" 
 
 "Dear lady, I've never been in!" 
 
 Oh, she was none the less downright. 
 " You're in now I've put you, and you must 
 stay." He looked round so woefully, however, 
 that she presently attenuated. " I don't mean 
 all the while, but long enough ! " 
 
 " Long enough for what ? "
 
 382 COVEIUNG END 
 
 "For me to feel you're here." 
 
 "And how long will that take?" 
 
 "Well, you think me very fast but some- 
 times I'm slow. I told you just now, at any 
 rate," she went on, "that I had arranged you 
 should lose nothing. Is the very next thing I 
 do, then, to make you lose everything?" 
 
 "It isn't a question of what I lose," the 
 young man anxiously cried ; " it's a question of 
 what I do! What have I done to find it all 
 so plain?" Fate was really fate reversed, 
 improved, and unnatural too much for him, 
 and his heated young face showed honest stupe- 
 faction. "I haven't lifted a finger. It's you 
 who have done all." 
 
 "Yes, but if you're just where you were 
 before, how in the world are you saved ? " She 
 put it to him with still superior lucidity. 
 
 " By my life's being my own again to do 
 what I want." 
 
 " What you ' want ' " Mrs. Gracedew's hand- 
 some uplifted head had it all there, every inch 
 of it "is to keep your house." 
 
 "Ah, but only," he perfectly assented, "if, 
 as you said, you find a way ! " 
 
 " I have found a way and there the way is : 
 for me just simply not to touch the place.
 
 COVEKING END 383 
 
 What you 'want,'" she argued more closely, 
 " is what made you give in to Prodmore. What 
 you 'want' is these walls and these acres. 
 What you 'want' is to take the way I first 
 showed you." 
 
 Her companion's eyes, quitting for the pur- 
 pose her face, looked to the quarter marked by 
 her last words ' as at an horizon now remote. 
 "Why, the way you first showed me was to 
 marry Cora ! " 
 
 She had to admit it, but as little as possible. 
 " Practically yes. " 
 
 " Well, it's just ' practically ' that I can't ! " 
 
 "I didn't know that then," said Mrs. Grace- 
 dew. "You didn't tell me." 
 
 He passed, with an approach to a grimace, 
 his hand over the back of his head. " I felt 
 a delicacy ! " 
 
 "I didn't even know that." She spoke it 
 almost sadly. 
 
 "It didn't strike you that I might?" 
 
 She thought a moment. "No." She thought 
 again. " No. But don't quarrel with me about 
 it now!" 
 
 "Quarrel with you?" he looked amazement. 
 
 She laughed, but she had changed colour. " Cora, 
 at any rate, felt no delicacy. Cora told me."
 
 384 COVERING END 
 
 Clement Yule fairly gaped. "Then she did 
 know ? " 
 
 " She knew all ; and if her father said she 
 didn't, he simply told you what was not." She 
 frankly gave him this, but the next minute, as 
 if she had startled him more than she meant, 
 she jumped to reassurance. " It was quite right 
 of her. She would have refused you." 
 
 The young man stared. " Oh ! " He was 
 quick, however, to show by an amusement 
 perhaps a trifle over-done that he felt no per- 
 sonal wound. " Do you call that quite right ? " 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew looked at it again. " For her 
 yes ; and for Prodmore." 
 
 "Oh, for Prodmore" his laugh grew more 
 grim " with all my heart ! " 
 
 This, then, her kind eyes seemed to drop it 
 upon him, was all she meant. " To stay at your 
 post that was the way I showed you." 
 
 He had come round to it now, as mechanically, 
 in intenser thought, he smoothed down the thick 
 hair he had rubbed up ; but his face soon enough 
 gave out, in wonder and pain, that his freedom 
 was somehow only a new predicament. "How 
 can I take any way at all, dear lady ? " 
 
 " If I only stick here in your path ? " She had 
 taken him straight up, and with spirit ; and the
 
 COVERING END 385 
 
 same spirit bore her to the end. " I won't stick 
 a moment more ! Haven't I been trying this age 
 to leave you ? " 
 
 Clement Yule, for all answer, caught her sharply, 
 in her passage, by the arm. " You surrender your 
 rights ? " He was for an instant almost terrible. 
 
 She quite turned pale with it. " Weren't you 
 ready to surrender yours f " 
 
 "I hadn't any, so it was deuced easy. I hadn't 
 paid for them." 
 
 Oh that, she let him see, even though with 
 his continued grasp he might hurt her, had 
 nothing in it ! " Your ancestors had paid : it's 
 the same thing." Erect there in the brightness of 
 her triumph and the force of her logic, she must 
 yet, to anticipate his return, take a stride like 
 a sudden dip into a gully and the scramble up on 
 the other bank that put her dignity to the test. 
 " You're just, in a manner, my tenant." 
 
 " But how can I treat that as such a mere de- 
 tail ? I'm your tenant on what terms ? " 
 
 " Oh, any terms choose them for yourself ! " 
 She made an attempt to free her arm gave it a 
 small vain shake. Then, as if to bribe him to 
 let her go : " You can write me about them." 
 
 He appeared to consider it. "To Missoura 
 Top?" 
 
 2c
 
 386 COVERING END 
 
 She fully assented, "I go right back." As if 
 it had put him off his guard she broke away. 
 " Farewell ! " 
 
 She broke away, but he broke faster, and once 
 more, nearer the door, he had barred her escape. 
 " Just one little moment, please. If you won't 
 tell me your own terms, you must at least tell me 
 Prodmore's." 
 
 Ah, the fiend she could never squeeze past 
 that! All she could do, for the instant, was to 
 reverberate foolishly " Prodmore's ? " 
 
 But there was nothing foolish, at last, about him. 
 "How you did it how you managed him." 
 His feet were firm while he waited, though he 
 had to wait some time. " You bought him out ? " 
 
 She made less of it than, clearly, he had ever 
 heard made of a stroke of business ; it might have 
 been a case of his owing her ninepence. "I 
 bought him out." 
 
 He wanted at least the exact sum. " For how 
 much ? " Her silence seemed to say that she had 
 made no note of it, but his pressure only increased. 
 " I really must know." 
 
 She continued to try to treat it as if she had 
 merely paid for his cab she put even what 
 she could of that suggestion into a tender, help- 
 less, obstinate headshake. " You shall never 
 Jmow ! "
 
 COVERING END 387 
 
 The only thing his own manner met was the 
 obstinacy. "I'll get it from him!" 
 
 She repeated her headshake, but with a world 
 of sadness added, " Get it if you can ! " 
 
 He looked into her eyes now as if it was 
 the sadness that struck him most. " He won't 
 say, because he did you ? " 
 
 They showed each other, on this, the least 
 separated faces yet. "He'll never, never say." 
 
 The confidence in it was so tender that it 
 sounded almost like pity, and the young man 
 took it up with all the flush of the sense that 
 pity could be but for him. This sense broke 
 full in her face. " The scoundrel ! " 
 
 " Not a bit ! " she returned, with equal pas- 
 sion "I was only too clever for him ! " The 
 thought of it was again an exaltation in which 
 she pushed her friend aside. " So let me go ! " 
 
 The push was like a jar that made the vessel 
 overflow, and he was before her now as if he 
 stretched across the hall. " With the heroic 
 view of your power and the barren beauty of 
 your sacrifice ? You pour out money, you move 
 a mountain, and to let you 'go,' to close the 
 door fast behind you, is all I can figure out 
 to do for you ? " His emotion trembled out of 
 him with the stammer of a new language, but
 
 388 COVERING END 
 
 it was as if in a minute or two he had thrown 
 over all consciousness. "You're the most gen- 
 erous you're the noblest of women ! The 
 wonderful chance that brought you here ! " 
 
 His own arm was grasped now she knew 
 better than he about the wonderful chance. " It 
 brought you at the same happy hour ! I've 
 done what I liked," she went on very simply ; 
 "and the only way to thank me is to believe it." 
 
 " You've done it for a proud, poor man " his 
 answer was quite as direct. " He has nothing 
 in the light of such a magic as yours either 
 to give or to hope ; but you've made him, in 
 a little miraculous hour, think of you " 
 
 He stumbled with the rush of things, and 
 if silence can, in its way, be active, there was 
 a collapse too, for an instant, on her closed lips. 
 These lips, however, she at last opened. " How 
 have I made him think of me ? " 
 
 " As he has thought of no other woman ! " 
 He had personal possession of her now, and it 
 broke, as he pressed her, as he pleaded, the help- 
 less fall of his eloquence. "Mrs. Gracedew 
 don't leave me." He jerked his head passion- 
 ately at the whole place and the yellow after- 
 noon. " If you made me care " 
 
 " It was surely that you had made me first ! "
 
 COVERING END 389 
 
 She laughed, and her laugh disengaged her, so 
 that before he could reply she had again put 
 space between them. 
 
 He accepted the space now he appeared so 
 sure of his point. " Then let me go on caring. 
 When I asked you awhile back for some pos- 
 sible adjustment to my new source of credit, 
 you simply put off the question told me I 
 must trust to time for it. Well," said Clement 
 Yule, "I've trusted to time so effectually that 
 ten little minutes have made me find it. I've 
 found it because I've so quickly found you. May 
 I, Mrs. Gracedew, keep all that I've found ? I 
 offer you in return the only thing I have to give 
 I offer you my hand and my life." 
 
 She held him off, across the hall, for a time 
 almost out of proportion to the previous wait 
 he had just made so little of. Then at last also, 
 when she answered, it might have passed for a 
 plea for further postponement, even for a plea 
 
 for mercy. " Ah, Captain Yule !" But she 
 
 turned suddenly off : the flower had been nipped 
 in the bud by the re-entrance of Chivers, at whom 
 his master veritably glowered. 
 
 " What the devil is it ? " 
 
 The old man showed the shock, but he had his 
 duty. "Another party,"
 
 390 COVERING END 
 
 Mrs. Gracedew, at this, wheeled round. " The 
 ' party up ' ! " It brought back her voice in- 
 deed, all her gaiety. And her gaiety was always 
 determinant. " Show them in." 
 
 Clement Yule's face fell while Chivers pro- 
 ceeded to obey. " You'll have them ? " he wailed 
 across the hall. 
 
 " Ah I mayn't I be proud of my house ? " she 
 tossed back at him. 
 
 At this, radiant, he had rushed at her. " Then 
 you accept ? " 
 
 Her raised hand checked him. " Hush ! " 
 
 He fell back the party was there. Chivers 
 ushered it as he had ushered the other, making 
 the most, this time, of more scanty material 
 four persons so spectacled, satchelled, shawled, 
 and handbooked that they testified on the spot 
 to a particular foreign origin and presented 
 themselves indeed very much as tourists who, 
 at an hotel, casting up the promise of comfort 
 or the portent of cost, take possession, while 
 they wait for their keys, with expert looks and 
 free sounds. Clement Yule, who had receded, 
 effacing himself, to the quarter opposed to that 
 of his companion, addressed to their visitors a 
 covert but dismayed stare and then, edging 
 round, in his agitation, to the rear, instinctively
 
 COVERING END 391 
 
 sought relief by escape through the open pas- 
 sage. One of the invaders meanwhile a broad- 
 faced gentleman with long hair tucked behind 
 his ears and a ring on each forefinger had 
 lost no time in showing he knew where to 
 begin. He began at the top the proper place, 
 and took in the dark pictures ranged above the 
 tapestry. " Olt vamily bortraits ? " he appealed 
 to Chivers and spoke very loud. 
 
 Chivers rose to the occasion and, gracefully paw- 
 ing the air, began also at the beginning. " Dame 
 Dorothy Yule who lived to a hundred and one." 
 
 " A hundred and one ach so ! " broke, with 
 a resigned absence of criticism, from each of 
 the interested group ; another member of which, 
 however, indicated with a somewhat fatigued 
 skip the central figure of the series, the person- 
 age with the long white legs that Mrs. Grace- 
 dew had invited the previous inquirers to remark. 
 " Who's dis ? " the present inquirer asked. 
 
 The question affected the lovely lady over by 
 the fireplace as the trumpet of battle affects a 
 generous steed. She flashed on the instant into 
 the middle of the hall and into the friendliest 
 and most familiar relation with everyone and 
 with everything. "John Anthony Yule, sir, 
 who passed away, poor duck, in his flower ! "
 
 392 COVERING END 
 
 They met her with low salutations, a sweep of 
 ugly shawls, and a brush of queer German hats : 
 she had issued, to their glazed convergence, from 
 the dusk of the Middle Ages and the shade of 
 high pieces, and now stood there, beautiful and 
 human and happy, in a light that, whatever it 
 was for themselves, the very breadth of their 
 attention, the expression of their serious faces, 
 converted straightway for her into a new, and 
 oh ! into the right, one. To a detached observer 
 of the whole it would have been promptly clear 
 that she found herself striking these good people 
 very much as the lawful heir had, half an hour 
 before, struck another stranger that she pro- 
 duced in them, in her setting of assured antiquity, 
 quite the romantic vibration that she had re- 
 sponded to in the presence of that personage. 
 They read her as she read Am, and a bright and 
 deepening cheer, reflected dimly in their thick 
 thoroughness, went out from her as she accepted 
 their reading. An impression was exchanged, 
 for the minute, from side to side their grave 
 admiration of the finest feature of the curious 
 house and the deep free radiance of her silent, 
 grateful " Why not ? " It made a passage of 
 some intensity and some duration, of which the 
 effect, indeed, the next minute, was to cause the
 
 COVERING END 393 
 
 only lady of the party a matron of rich Jewish 
 type, with small nippers on a huge nose and a 
 face out of proportion to her little Freischiitz hat 
 to break the spell by an uneasy turn and a stray 
 glance at one of the other pictures. "Who's dat ? " 
 " That ? " The picture chanced to be a por- 
 trait over the wide arch, and something happened, 
 at the very moment, to arrest Mrs. Gracedew's 
 eyes rather above than below. What took place, 
 in a word, was that Clement Yule, already fidget- 
 ing in his impatience back from the front, just 
 occupied the arch, completed her thought, and 
 filled her vision. " Oh, that's my future hus- 
 band ! " He caught the words, but answered 
 them only by a long look at her as he moved, 
 with a checked wildness of which she alone, of 
 all the spectators, had a sense, straight across the 
 hall again and to the other opening. He paused 
 there as he had done before, then with a last 
 dumb appeal to her dropped into the court and 
 passed into the garden. Mrs. Gracedew, already 
 so wonderful to their visitors, was, before she 
 followed him, wonderful with a greater wonder 
 to poor Chivers. "You dear old thing I give 
 it all back to you ! "
 
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