University of Virginia Library
PS;2110;.F22;V.12
ALD The Aspern papers: The turn o
XX □□□
QS3 1S3


ALDERMAN LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA


Uf#&rs?iy©f Virginia

Libraries





THE NOVELS AND TALES OF
HENRY JAMES
New York Edition
VOLUME XII











Juliana*s Court





THE ASPERN PAPERS
THE TURN OF THE SCREW
THE LIAR
THE TWO FACES
BY
HENRY JAMES

Wb mm. \
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1922


Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons
The Aspern Papers. Copyright, 1888, by Henry James
The Turn of the Screw. Copyright, 1898, by The Macmillan Company
The Liar. Copyright, 1889, by Henry James
The Two Faces. Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons


Published under special arrangement with
The Macmillan Company


PREFACE
I not only recover with ease, but I delight to recall, the
first impulse given to the idea of "The Aspern Papers."
It is at the same time true that my present mention of it
may perhaps too effectually dispose of any complacent claim
to my having "found" the situation. Not that I quite
know indeed what situations the seeking fabulist does
"find "; he seeks them enough assuredly, but his discoveries
are, like those of the navigator, the chemist, the biologist,
scarce more than alert recognitions. He comes upon the in-
teresting thing as Columbus came upon the isle of San Salva-
dor, because he had moved in the right direction for it —
also because he knew, with the encounter, what "making
land" then and there represented. Nature had so placed it,
to profit—if as profit we may measure the matter!—by his
fine unrest, just as history, "literary history" we in this con-
nexion call it, had in an out-of-the-way corner of the great
garden of life thrown off a curious flower that I was to feel
worth gathering as soon as I saw it. I got wind of my
positive fact, I followed the scent. It was in Florence years
ago; which is precisely, of the whole matter, what I like
most to remember. The air of the old-time Italy invests
it, a mixture that on the faintest invitation I rejoice again
to inhale—and this in spite of the mere cold renewal, ever,
of the infirm side of that felicity, the sense, in the whole
element, of things too numerous, too deep, too obscure,
too strange, or even simply too beautiful, for any ease of
intellectual relation. One must pay one's self largely with
words, I think, one must induce almost any "Italian sub-
ject" to make believe it gives up its secret, in order to keep
at all on working—or call them perhaps rather playing —
terms with the general impression. We entertain it thus,
the impression, by the aid of a merciful convention which v


PREFACE
resembles the fashion of our intercourse with Iberians or
Orientals whose form of courtesy places everything they
have at our disposal. We thank them and call upon them,
but without acting on their professions. The offer has been
too large and our assurance is too small; we peep at most
into two or three of the chambers of their hospitality, with
the rest of the case stretching beyond our ken and escaping
our penetration. The pious fiction suffices; we have en-
tered, we have seen, we are charmed. So, right and left, in
Italy—before the great historic complexity at least — pene-
tration fails; we scratch at the extensive surface, we meet
the perfunctory smile, we hang about in the golden air. But
we exaggerate our gathered values only if we are eminently
witless. It is fortunately the exhibition in all the world be-
fore which, as admirers, we can most remain superficial with-
out feeling silly.
All of which I note, however, perhaps with too scant
relevance to the inexhaustible charm of Roman and Floren-
tine memories. Off the ground, at a distance, our fond in-
difference to being " silly" grows fonder still; the working
convention, as I have called it — the convention of the real
revelations and surrenders on one side and the real immer-
sions and appreciations on the other — has not only nothing
to keep it down, but every glimpse of contrast, every pang
of exile and every nostalgic twinge to keep it up. These
latter haunting presences in fact, let me note, almost reduce
at first to a mere blurred, sad, scarcely consolable vision
this present revisiting, re-appropriating impulse. There are
parts of one's past, evidently, that bask consentingly and se-
renely enough in the light of other days — which is but the
intensity of thought; and there are other parts that take it
as with agitation and pain, a troubled consciousness that
heaves as with the disorder of drinking it deeply in. So it is
at any rate, fairly in too thick and rich a retrospect, that I
see my old Venice of " The Aspern Papers," that I see the
still earlier one of Jeffrey Aspern himself, and that I see
even the comparatively recent Florence that was to drop
into my ear the solicitation of these things. I would fain
vi


PREFACE
M lay it on" thick for the very love of them — that at least
I may profess; and, with the ground of this desire frankly
admitted, something that somehow makes, in the whole
story, for a romantic harmony. I have had occasion in the
course of these remarks to define my sense of the romantic,
and am glad to encounter again here an instance of that
virtue as I understand it. I shall presently say why this
small case so ranges itself, but must first refer more exactly
to the thrill of appreciation it was immediately to excite in
me. I saw it somehow at the very first blush as romantic
— for the use, of course I mean, I should certainly have
had to make of it — that Jane Clairmont, the half-sister of
Mary Godwin, Shelley's second wife and for a while the
intimate friend of Byron and the mother of his daughter
Allegra, should have been living on in Florence, where she
had long lived, up to our own day, and that in fact, had I
happened to hear of her but a little sooner, I might have
seen her in the flesh. The question of whether I should
have wished to do so was another matter — the question of
whether I shouldn't have preferred to keep her preciously
unseen, to run no risk, in other words, by too rude a choice,
of depreciating that romance-value which, as I say, it was
instantly inevitable to attach (through association above all,
with another signal circumstance) to her long survival.
I had luckily not had to deal with the difficult option;
difficult in such a case by reason of that odd law which
somehow always makes the minimum of valid suggestion
serve the man of imagination better than the maximum.
The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he
can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than
he can really take. Nothing, fortunately, however, had, as
the case stood, depended on my delicacy; I might have
"looked up" Miss Clairmont in previous years had I been
earlier informed — the silence about her seemed full of the
"irony of fate"; but I felt myself more concerned with
the mere strong fact of her having testified for the reality
and the closeness of our relation to the past than with any
question of the particular sort of person I might have flatvii


PREFACE
tered myself I "found." I had certainly at the very least
been saved the undue simplicity of pretending to read mean-
ings into things absolutely sealed and beyond test or proof
— to tap a fount of waters that couldn't possibly not have
run dry. The thrill of learning that she had 4 4overlapped,"
and by so much, and the wonder of my having doubtless at
several earlier seasons passed again and again, all unknow-
ing, the door of her house, where she sat above, within call
and in her habit as she lived, these things gave me all I
wanted; I seem to remember in fact that my more or less
immediately recognising that I positively oughtn't — "for
anything to come of it" — to have wanted more. I saw,
quickly, how something might come of it thus; whereas a
fine instinct told me that the effect of a nearer view of the
case (the case of the overlapping) would probably have had
to be quite differently calculable. It was really with another
item of knowledge, however, that I measured the mistake I
should have made in waking up sooner to the question of
opportunity. That item consisted of the action taken on the
premises by a person who had waked up in time, and the
legend of whose consequent adventure, as a few spoken
words put it before me, at once kindled a flame. This
gentleman, an American of long ago, an ardent Shelleyite,
a singularly marked figure and himself in the highest degree
a subject for a free sketch — I had known him a little, but
there is not a reflected glint of him in "The Aspern Pap-
ers " — was named to me as having made interest with Miss
Clairmont to be accepted as a lodger on the calculation
that she would have Shelley documents for which, in the
possibly not remote event of her death, he would thus en-
joy priority of chance to treat with her representatives. He
had at any rate, according to the legend, become, on earn-
est Shelley grounds, her yearning, though also her highly
diplomatic, pensionnaire — but without gathering, as was to
befall, the fruit of his design.
Legend here dropped to another key; it remained in a
manner interesting, but became to my ear a trifle coarse, or
at least rather vague and obscure. It mentioned a younger viii


PREFACE
female relative of the ancient woman as a person who, for
a queer climax, had had to be dealt with; it flickered so
for a moment and then, as a light, to my great relief, quite
went out. It had flickered indeed but at the best — yet
had flickered enough to give me my "facts," bare facts of
intimation; which, scant handful though they were, were
more distinct and more numerous than I mostly like facts:
like them, that is, as we say of an etcher's progressive sub-
ject, in an early " state." Nine tenths of the artist's interest
in them is that of what he shall add to them and how he
shall turn them. Mine, however, in the connexion I speak
of, had fortunately got away from me, and quite of their
own movement, in time not to crush me. So it was, at all
events, that my imagination preserved power to react under
the mere essential charm — that, I mean, of a final scene of
the rich dim Shelley drama played out in the very theatre
of our own " modernity." This was the beauty that appealed
to me; there had been, so to speak, a forward continuity,
from the actual man, the divine poet, on; and the curious,
the ingenious, the admirable thing would be to throw it
backward again, to compress — squeezing it hard!—the
connexion that had drawn itself out, and convert so the
stretched relation into a value of nearness on our own part.
In short I saw my chance as admirable, and one reason,
when the direction is right, may serve as well as fifty; but
if I "took over," as I say, everything that was of the essence,
I stayed my hand for the rest. The Italian side of the leg-
end closely clung; if only because the so possible terms of
my Juliana's life in the Italy of other days could make con-
ceivable for her the fortunate privacy, the long uninvaded
and uninterviewed state on which I represent her situation
as founded. Yes, a surviving unexploited unparagraphed
Juliana was up to a quarter of a century since still suppose-
able — as much so as any such buried treasure, any such
grave unprofaned, would defy probability now. And then
the case had the air of the past just in the degree in which
that air, I confess, most appeals to me — when the region
over which it hangs is far enough away without being too far.
ix


PREFACE
I delight in a palpable imaginable visitable past— in the
nearer distances and the clearer mysteries, the marks and signs
of a world we may reach over to as by making a long arm we
grasp an object at the other end of our own table. The
table is the one, the common expanse, and where we lean,
so stretching, we find it firm and continuous. That, to my
imagination, is the past fragrant of all, or of almost all, the
poetry of the thing outlived and lost and gone, and yet in
which the precious element of closeness, telling so of con-
nexions but tasting so of differences, remains appreciable.
With more moves back the element of the appreciable
shrinks — just as the charm of looking over a garden-wall
into another garden breaks down when successions of walls
appear. The other gardens, those still beyond, may be there,
but even by use of our longest ladder we are baffled and be-
wildered — the view is mainly a view of barriers. The one
partition makes the place we have wondered about other, both
richly and recogniseably so ; but who shall pretend to im-
pute an effect of composition to the twenty? We are di-
vided of course between liking to feel the past strange and
liking to feel it familiar; the difficulty is, for intensity, to
catch it at the moment when the scales of the balance hang
with the right evenness. I say for intensity, for we may
profit by them in other aspects enough if we are content to
measure or to feel loosely. It would take me too far, how-
ever, to tell why the particular afternoon light that I thus
call intense rests clearer to my sense on the Byronic age,
as I conveniently name it, than on periods more protected by
the "dignity" of history. With the times beyond,intrinsic-
ally more "strange," the tender grace, for the backward
vision, has faded, the afternoon darkened; for any time
nearer to us the special effect hasn't begun. So there, to
put the matter crudely, is the appeal I fondly recognise, an
appeal residing doubtless more in the "special effect," in
some deep associational force, than in a virtue more intrinsic.
I am afraid I must add, since I allow myself so much to fan-
tasticate, that the impulse had more than once taken me to
project the Byronic age and the afternoon light across the x


PREFACE
great sea, to see in short whether association would carry so
far and what the young century might pass for on that side
of the modern world where it was not only itself so irremedi-
ably youngest, but was bound up with youth in everything
else. There was a refinement of curiosity in this imputation
of a golden strangeness to American social facts — though
I cannot pretend, I fear, that there was any greater wisdom. Since what it had come to then was, harmlessly enough,
cultivating a sense of the past under that close protection,
it was natural, it was fond and filial, to wonder if a few of
the distilled drops mightn't be gathered from some vision of,
say, "old" New York. Would that human congeries, to
aid obligingly in the production of a fable, be conceivable
as " taking" the afternoon light with the right happy slant?
— or could a recogniseable reflexion of the Byronic age, in
other words, be picked up on the banks of the Hudson?
(Only just there, beyond the great sea, if anywhere: in no
other connexion would the question so much as raise its
head. I admit that Jeffrey Aspern isn't even feebly local-
ised, but I thought New York as I projected him.) It was
"amusing," in any case, always, to try experiments; and the
experiment for the right transposition of my Juliana would
be to fit her out with an immortalising poet as transposed
as herself. Delicacy had demanded, I felt, that my appro-
priation of the Florentine legend should purge it, first of all,
of references too obvious; so that, to begin with, I shifted
the scene of the adventure. Juliana, as I saw her, was think-
able only in Byronic and more or less immediately post-Byronic Italy; but there were conditions in which she was
ideally arrangeable, as happened, especially in respect to the
later time and the long undetected survival; there being ab-
solutely no refinement of the mouldy rococo, in human or
whatever other form, that you may not disembark at the
dislocated water-steps of almost any decayed monument of
Venetian greatness in auspicious quest of. It was a question,
in fine, of covering one's tracks — though with no great
elaboration I am bound to admit; and I felt I couldn't
cover mine more than in postulating a comparative Amerixi


PREFACE
can Byron to match an American Miss Clairmont — she
as absolute as she would. I scarce know whether best to
say for this device to-day that it cost me little or that it cost
me much; it was "cheap" or expensive according to the
degree of verisimilitude artfully obtained. If that degree
appears nil the "art," such as it was, is wasted, and my
remembrance of the contention, on the part of a highly crit-
ical friend who at that time and later on often had my ear,
that it had been simply foredoomed to be wasted, puts before
me the passage in the private history of " The Aspern Pap-
ers" that I now find, I confess, most interesting. I comfort
myself for the needful brevity of a present glance at it by
the sense that the general question involved, under criticism,
can't but come up for us again at higher pressure.
My friend's argument bore then — at the time and after-
ward — on my vicious practice, as he maintained, of postulating for the purpose of my fable celebrities who not only
had n't existed in the conditions I imputed to them, but who
for the most part (and in no case more markedly than in
that of Jeffrey Aspern) couldn't possibly have done so. The
stricture was to apply itself to a whole group of short fictions
in which I had, with whatever ingenuity, assigned to several
so-called eminent figures positions absolutely unthinkable in
our actual encompassing air, an air definitely unfavourable
to certain forms of eminence. It was vicious, my critic
contended, to flourish forth on one's page "great people,"
public persons, who shouldn't more or less square with our
quite definite and calculable array of such notabilities; and
by this rule I was heavily incriminated. The rule demanded
that the "public person" portrayed should be at least of
the tradition, of the general complexion, of the face-value,
exactly, of some past or present producible counterfoil.
Mere private figures, under one's hand, might correspond
with nobody, it being of their essence to be but narrowly
known; the represented state of being conspicuous, on the
other hand, involved before anything else a recognition —
and none of my eminent folk were recogniseable. It was all
very well for instance to have put one's self at such pains xii


PREFACE
for Miriam Rooth in 44 The Tragic Muse "; but there was
misapplied zeal, there a case of pitiful waste, crying aloud
to be denounced. Miriam is offered not as a young person
passing unnoticed by her age — like the Biddy Dormers and
Julia Dallows, say, of the same book, but as a high rarity,
a time-figure of the scope inevitably attended by other com-
memorations. Where on earth would be then Miriam's
inscribed " counterfoil," and in what conditions of the con-
temporary English theatre, in what conditions of criticism,
of appreciation, under what conceivable Anglo-Saxon star,
might we take an artistic value of this order either for
produced or for recognised? We are, as a "public," chalk-marked by nothing, more unmistakeably, than by the truth
that we know nothing of such values — any more than, as
my friend was to impress on me, we are susceptible of con-
sciousness of such others (these in the sphere of literary em-
inence) as my Neil Paraday in 44 The Death of the Lion,"
as my Hugh Vereker in 44 The Figure in the Carpet," as
my Ralph Limbert, above all, in 14 The Next Time," as
sundry unprecedented and unmatched heroes and martyrs of
the artistic ideal, in short, elsewhere exemplified in my pages.
We shall come to these objects of animadversion in another
hour, when I shall have no difficulty in producing the de-
fence I found for them — since, obviously, I hadn't cast
them into the world all naked and ashamed; and I deal for
the moment but with the stigma in general as Jeffrey Aspern
carries it.
The charge being that I foist upon our early American
annals a distinguished presence for which they yield me
absolutely no warrant —44 Where, within them, gracious
heaven, were we to look for so much as an approach to the
social elements of habitat and climate of birds of that note
and plumage?" —I find his link with reality then just in
the tone of the picture wrought round him. What was that
tone but exactly, but exquisitely, calculated, the harmless
hocus-pocus under cover of which we might suppose him
to have existed? This tone is the tone, artistically speaking,
of44 amusement," the current floating that precious influence xiii


PREFACE
home quite as one of those high tides watched by the smug-
glers of old might, in case of their boat's being boarded, be
trusted to wash far up the strand the cask of foreign liquor
expertly committed to it. If through our lean prime West-
ern period no dim and charming ghost of an adventurous
lyric genius might by a stretch of fancy flit, if the time was
really too hard to "take," in the light form proposed, the
elegant reflexion, then so much the worse for the time—it
was all one could say! The retort to that of course was that
such a plea represented no "link" with reality — which was
what was under discussion— but only a link, and flimsy
enough too, with the deepest depths of the artificial: the
restrictive truth exactly contended for, which may embody
my critic's last word rather of course than my own. My
own, so far as I shall pretend in that especial connexion to
report it, was that one's warrant, in such a case, hangs es-
sentially on the question of whether or no the false element
imputed would have borne that test of further development
which so exposes the wrong and so consecrates the right.
My last word was, heaven forgive me, that, occasion favour-
ing, I could have perfectly "worked out" Jeffrey Aspern.
The boast remains indeed to be verified when we shall arrive
at the other challenged cases.
That particular challenge at least "The Turn of the
Screw" doesn't incur; and this perfectly independent and
irresponsible little fiction rejoices, beyond any rival on a like
ground, in a conscious provision of prompt retort to the
sharpest question that may be addressed to it. For it has the
small strength — if I shouldn't say rather the unattackable
ease—of a perfect homogeneity, of being, to the very last
grain of its virtue, all of a kind; the very kind, as happens,
least apt to be baited by earnest criticism, the only sort of
criticism of which account need be taken. To have handled
again this so full-blown flower of high fancy is to be led back
by it to easy and happy recognitions. Let the first of these
be that of the starting-point itself—the sense, all charming
again, of the circle, one winter afternoon, round the hall-fire
of a grave old country-house where (for all the world as if xiv


PREFACE
to resolve itself promptly and obligingly into convertible,
into "literaiy" stuff) the talk turned, on I forget what
homely pretext, to apparitions and night-fears, to the marked
and sad drop in the general supply, and still more in the
general quality, of such commodities. The good, the really
effective and heart-shaking ghost-stories (roughly so to term
them) appeared all to have been told, and neither new crop
nor new type in any quarter awaited us. The new type in-
deed, the mere modern " psychical" case, washed clean of
all queerness as by exposure to a flowing laboratory tap, and
equipped with credentials vouching for this— the new type
clearly promised little, for the more it was respectably cer-
tified the less it seemed of a nature to rouse the dear old
sacred terror. Thus it was, I remember, that amid our la-
ment for a beautiful lost form, our distinguished host ex-
pressed the wish that he might but have recovered for us one
of the scantest of fragments of this form at its best. He had
never forgotten the impression made on him as a young man
by the withheld glimpse, as it were, of a dreadful matter that
had been reported years before, and with as few particulars,
to a lady with whom he had youthfully talked. The story
would have been thrilling could she but have found herself
in better possession of it, dealing as it did with a couple of
small children in an out-of-the way place, to whom the spirits
of certain " bad " servants, dead in the employ of the house,
were believed to have appeared with the design of "getting
hold" of them. This was all, but there had been more,
which my friend's old converser had lost the thread of: she
could only assure him of the wonder of the allegations as
she had anciently heard them made. He himself could give us but this shadow of a shadow—my own appreciation of which, I need scarcely say, was exactly wrapped up in that
thinness. On the surface there wasn't much, but another
grain, none the less, would have spoiled the precious pinch
addressed to its end as neatly as some modicum extracted
from an old silver snuff-box and held between finger and
thumb. I was to remember the haunted children and the
prowling servile spirits as a "value," of the disquieting sort, xv


PREFACE
in all conscience sufficient; so that when, after an interval,
I was asked for something seasonable by the promoters of
a periodical dealing in the time-honoured Christmas-tide toy,
I bethought myself at once of the vividest little note for
sinister romance that I had ever jotted down.
Such was the private source of " The Turn of the Screw ";
and I wondered, I confess, why so fine a germ, gleaming
there in the wayside dust of life, had never been deftly picked
up. The thing had for me the immense merit of allowing
the imagination absolute freedom of hand, of inviting it to
act on a perfectly clear field, with no "outside" control
involved, no pattern of the usual or the true or the terrible
u pleasant" (save always of course the high pleasantry of
one's very form) to consort with. This makes in fact the
charm of my second reference, that I find here a perfect ex-
ample of an exercise of the imagination unassisted, unasso-
ciated — playing the game, making the score, in the phrase
of our sporting day, off its own bat. To what degree the
game was worth playing I needn't attempt to say: the ex-
ercise I have noted strikes me now, I confess, as the inter-
esting thing, the imaginative faculty acting with the whole
of the case on its hands. The exhibition involved is in other
words a fairy-tale pure and simple—save indeed as to its
springing not from an artless and measureless, but from a
conscious and cultivated credulity. Yet the fairy-tale be-
longs mainly to either of two classes, the short and sharp
and single, charged more or less with the compactness of
anecdote (as to which let the familiars of our childhood, Cin-
derella and Blue-Beard and Hop o' my Thumb and Little
Red Riding Hood and many of the gems of the Brothers
Grimm directly testify), or else the long and loose, the co-
pious, the various, the endless, where, dramatically speak-
ing, roundness is quite sacrificed — sacrificed to fulness, sac-
rificed to exuberance, if one will: witness at hazard almost
any one of the Arabian Nights. The charm of all these
things for the distracted modern mind is in the clear field of
experience, as I call it, over which we are thus led to roam;
an annexed but independent world in which nothing is right xvi


PREFACE
save as we rightly imagine it. We have to do that, and we
do it happily for the short spurt and in the smaller piece,
achieving so perhaps beauty and lucidity; we flounder, we
lose breath, on the other hand—that is we fail, not of con-
tinuity, but of an agreeable unity, of the "roundness" in
which beauty and lucidity largely reside — when we go in,
as they say, for great lengths and breadths. And this, oddly
enough, not because " keeping it up" isn't abundantly within
the compass of the imagination appealed to in certain con-
ditions, but because the finer interest depends just on haw it
is kept up.
Nothing is so easy as improvisation, the running on and
on of invention; it is sadly compromised, however, from the
moment its stream breaks bounds and gets into flood. Then
the waters may spread indeed, gathering houses and herds
and crops and cities into their arms and wrenching off, for
our amusement, the whole face of the land — only violating
by the same stroke our sense of the course and the channel,
which is our sense of the uses of a stream and the virtue of
a story. Improvisation, as in the Arabian Nights, may keep
on terms with encountered objects by sweeping them in and
floating them on its breast; but the great effect it so loses
— that of keeping on terms with itself. This is ever, I in-
timate, the hard thing for the fairy-tale; but by just so much
as it struck me as hard did it in "The Turn of the Screw"
affect me as irresistibly prescribed. To improvise with ex-
treme freedom and yet at the same time without the pos-
sibility of ravage, without the hint of a flood; to keep the
stream, in a word, on something like ideal terms with itself:
that was here my definite business. The thing was to aim
at absolute singleness, clearness and roundness, and yet to
depend on an imagination working freely, working (call it)
with extravagance; by which law it wouldn't be thinkable
except as free and wouldn't be amusing except as controlled.
The merit of the tale, as it stands, is accordingly, I judge,
that it has struggled successfully with its dangers. It is an
excursion into chaos while remaining, like Blue-Beard and
Cinderella, but an anecdote—though an anecdote amplified . xvii


PREFACE
and highly emphasised and returning upon itself; as, for that
matter, Cinderella and Blue-Beard return. I need scarcely
add after this that it is a piece of ingenuity pure and sim-
ple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those
not easily caught (the "fun" of the capture of the merely
witless being ever but small), the jaded, the disillusioned, the
fastidious. Otherwise expressed, the study is of a conceived
"tone," the tone of suspected and felt trouble, of an in-
ordinate and incalculable sort — the tone of tragic, yet of
exquisite, mystification. To knead the subject of my young
friend's, the supposititious narrator's, mystification thick, and
yet strain the expression of it so clear and fine that beauty
would result: no side of the matter so revives for me as that
endeavour. Indeed if the artistic value of such an experiment
be measured by the intellectual echoes it may again, long
after, set in motion, the case would make in favour of this
little firm fantasy — which I seem to see draw behind it to-
day a train of associations. I ought doubtless to blush for
thus confessing them so numerous that I can but pick among
them for reference. I recall for instance a reproach made
me by a reader capable evidently, for the time, of some at-
tention, but not quite capable of enough, who complained
that I had n't sufficiently "characterised" my young woman
engaged in her labyrinth; hadn't endowed her with signs
and marks, features and humours, hadn't in a word invited
her to deal with her own mystery as well as with that of
Peter Quint, Miss Jessel and the hapless children. I remem-
ber well, whatever the absurdity of its now coming back to
me, my reply to that criticism — under which one's artistic,
one's ironic heart shook for the instant almost to breaking.
"You indulge in that stricture at your ease, and I don't
mind confiding to you that — strange as it may appear ! —
one has to choose ever so delicately among one's difficulties,
attaching one's self to the greatest, bearing hard on those
and intelligently neglecting the others. If one attempts to
tackle them all one is certain to deal completely with none;
whereas the effectual dealing with a few casts a blest golden
haze under cover of which, like wanton mocking goddesses xviii


PREFACE
in clouds, the others find prudent to retire. It was 4de.i
tres-joli,' in 4The Turn of the Screw,' please believe, tne
general proposition of our young woman's keeping crystal-
line her record of so many intense anomalies and obscur-
ities—by which I don't of course mean her explanation of
them, a different matter; and I saw no way, I feebly grant
(fighting, at the best too, periodically, for every grudged inch
of my space) to exhibit her in relations other than those;
one of which, precisely, would have been her relation to her
own nature. We have surely as much of her own nature as
we can swallow in watching it reflect her anxieties and in-
ductions. It constitutes no little of a character indeed, in
such conditions, for a young person, as she says, 'privately bred,' that she is able to make her particular credible state-
ment of such strange matters. She has 'authority,' which
is a good deal to have given her, and I couldn't have arrived
at so much had I clumsily tried for more."
For which truth I claim part of the charm latent on oc-
casion in the extracted reasons of beautiful things — put-
ting for the beautiful always, in a work of art, the close,
the curious, the deep. Let me place above all, however,
under the protection of that presence the side by which this
fiction appeals most to consideration: its choice of its way
of meeting its gravest difficulty. There were difficulties not
so grave: I had for instance simply to renounce all attempt
to keep the kind and degree of impression I wished to pro-
duce on terms with the to-day so copious psychical record
of cases of apparitions. Different signs and circumstances,
in the reports, mark these cases; different things are done
— though on the whole very little appears to be — by the
persons appearing; the point is, however, that some things
are never done at all: this negative quantity is large — cer-
tain reserves and proprieties and immobilities consistently
impose themselves. Recorded and attested "ghosts" are in
other words as little expressive, as little dramatic, above all
as little continuous and conscious and responsive, as is con-
sistent with their taking the trouble — and an immense
trouble they find it, we gather — to appear at all. Wonderxix


PREFACE
ful and interesting therefore at a given moment, they are
inconceivable figures in an action — and "The Turn of the
Screw" was an action, desperately, or it was nothing. I
had to decide in fine between having my apparitions correct
and having my story "good" — that is producing my im-
pression of the dreadful, my designed horror. Good ghosts,
speaking by book, make poor subjects, and it was clear
that from the first my hovering prowling blighting pre-
sences, my pair of abnormal agents, would have to depart
altogether from the rules. They would be agents in fact;
there would be laid on them the dire duty of causing the
situation to reek with the air of Evil. Their desire and their
ability to do so, visibly measuring meanwhile their effect,
together with their observed and described success — this
was exactly my central idea; so that, briefly, I cast my lot
with pure romance, the appearances conforming to the true
type being so little romantic.
This is to say, I recognise again, that Peter Quint and
Miss Jessel are not "ghosts " at all, as we now know the
ghost, but goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely con-
structed as those of the old trials for witchcraft; if not,
more pleasingly, fairies of the legendary order, wooing their
victims forth to see them dance under the moon. Not in-
deed that I suggest their reducibility to any form of the
pleasing pure and simple; they please at the best but through
having helped me to express my subject all directly and
intensely. Here it was — in the use made of them — that
I felt a high degree of art really required; and here it is that,
on reading the tale over, I find my precautions justified.
The essence of the matter was the villainy of motive in the
evoked predatory creatures; so that the result would be
ignoble — by which I mean would be trivial — were this
element of evil but feebly or inanely suggested. Thus arose
on behalf of my idea the lively interest of a possible sugges-
tion and process of adumbration; the question of how best
to convey that sense of the depths of the sinister without
which my fable would so woefully limp. Portentous evil —
how was I to save that, as an intention on the part of my xx


PREFACE
demon-spirits, from the drop, the comparative vulgarity, in-
evitably attending, throughout the whole range of possible
brief illustration, the offered example, the imputed vice, the
cited act, the limited deplorable presentable instance? To
bring the bad dead back to life for a second round of bad-
ness is to warrant them as indeed prodigious, and to become
hence as shy of specifications as of a waiting anti-climax.
One had seen, in fiction, some grand form of wrong-doing,
or better still of wrong-being, imputed, seen it promised and
announced as by the hot breath of the Pit — and then,
all lamentably, shrink to the compass of some particular
brutality, some particular immorality, some particular infamy
portrayed: with the result, alas, of the demonstration's fall-
ing sadly short. If my bad things, for " The Turn of the
Screw," I felt, should succumb to this danger, if they
shouldn't seem sufficiently bad, there would be nothing for
me but to hang my artistic head lower than I had ever known
occasion to do.
The view of that discomfort and the fear of that dis-
honour, it accordingly must have been, that struck the
proper light for my right, though by no means easy, short
cut. What, in the last analysis, had I to give the sense of?
Of their being, the haunting pair, capable, as the phrase is,
of everything — that is of exerting, in respect to the child-
ren, the very worst action small victims so conditioned
might be conceived as subject to. What would be then, on
reflexion, this utmost conceivability ? —a question to which
the answer all admirably came. There is for such a case no
eligible absolute of the wrong; it remains relative to fifty
other elements, a matter of appreciation, speculation, imag-
ination— these things moreover quite exactly in the light of
the spectator's, the critic's, the reader's experience. Only
make the reader's general vision of evil intense enough, I
said to myself—and that already is a charming job — and
his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy
(with the children) and horror (of their false friends) will
supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make
him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you xxi


PREFACE
are released from weak specifications. This ingenuity I took
pains— as indeed great pains were required — to apply j
and with a success apparently beyond my liveliest hope.
Droll enough at the same time, I must add, some of the
evidence — even when most convincing — of this success.
How can I feel my calculation to have failed, my wrought
suggestion not to have worked, that is, on my being as-
sailed, as has befallen me, with the charge of a monstrous
emphasis, the charge of all indecently expatiating? There
is not only from beginning to end of the matter not an inch
of expatiation, but my values are positively all blanks save
so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created ex-
pertness — on which punctual effects of strong causes no
writer can ever fail to plume himself — proceed to read into
them more or less fantastic figures. Of high interest to the
author meanwhile—and by the same stroke a theme for
the moralist— the artless resentful reaction of the enter-
tained person who has abounded in the sense of the situa-
tion. He visits his abundance, morally, on the artist — who
has but clung to an ideal of faultlessness. Such indeed, for
this latter, are some of the observations by which the pro-
longed strain of that clinging may be enlivened!
I arrive with "The Liar" (1888) and "The Two
Faces" (1900) at the first members of the considerable
group of shorter, of shortest tales here republished; though
I should perhaps place quite in the forefront "The Chap-
eron " and "The Pupil," at which we have already glanced.
I am conscious of much to say of these numerous small
productions as a family — a family indeed quite organised
as such, with its proper representatives, its "heads," its
subdivisions and its branches, its poor relations perhaps not
least: its unmistakeable train of poor relations in fact, the
very poorer, the poorest of whom I am, in family parl-
ance, for this formal appearance in society," cutting " with-
out a scruple. These repudiated members, some of them,
for that matter, well-nourished and substantial presences
enough, with their compromising rustiness plausibly, almost
touchingly dissimulated, I fondly figure as standing wistful xxii


PREFACE
but excluded, after the fashion of the outer fringe of the
connected whom there are not carriages enough to convey
from the church — whether (for we have our choice of
similes) to the wedding-feast or to the interment! Great for
me from far back had been the interest of the whole "ques-
tion of the short story," roundabout which our age has, for
lamentable reasons, heard so vain a babble; but I foresee
occasions yet to come when it will abundantly waylay me.
Then it will insist on presenting itself but in too many
lights. Little else perhaps meanwhile is more relevant as
to "The Liar" than the small fact of its having, when its
hour came, quite especially conformed to that custom of
shooting straight from the planted seed, of responding at
once to the touched spring, of which my fond appeal here
to "origins" and evolutions so depicts the sway. When it
shall come to fitting, historically, anything like all my small
children of fancy with their pair of progenitors, and all my
reproductive unions with their inevitable fruit, I shall seem
to offer my backward consciousness in the image of a shell
charged and recharged by the Fates with some patent and
infallible explosive. Never would there seem to have been
a pretence to such economy of ammunition!
However this may be, I come back, for "The Liar," as
for so many of its fellows, to holding my personal experi-
ence, poor thing though it may have been, immediately ac-
countable. For by what else in the world but by fatal design
had I been placed at dinner one autumn evening of old
London days face to face with a gentleman, met for the
first time, though favourably known to me by name and
fame, in whom I recognised the most unbridled colloquial
romancer the "joy of life" had ever found occasion to
envy? Under what other conceivable coercion had I been
invited to reckon, through the evening, with the type, with
the character, with the countenance, of this magnificent
master's wife, who, veracious, serene and charming, yet not
once meeting straight the eyes of one of us, did her duty by
each, and by her husband most of all, without so much as,
in the vulgar phrase, turning a hair? It was long ago, but xxiii


PREFACE
I have never, to this hour, forgotten the evening itself—embalmed for me now in an old-time sweetness beyond any
aspect of my reproduction. I made but a fifth person, the
other couple our host and hostess; between whom and one
of the company, while we listened to the woven wonders of
a summer holiday, the exploits of a salamander, among
Mediterranean isles, were exchanged, dimly and discreetly,
ever so guardedly, but all expressively, imperceptible linger-
ing looks. It was exquisite, it could but become, inevit-
ably, some "short story" or other, which it clearly pre-fitted
as the hand the glove. I must reserve "The Two Faces"
till I come to speak of the thrilling question of the poor
painter's tormented acceptance, in advance, of the scanted
canvas; of the writer's rueful hopeful assent to the condi-
tions known to him as "too little room to turn round." Of
the liveliest interest then — or so at least I could luckily al-
ways project the case — to see how he may nevertheless, in
the event, effectively manoeuvre. The value of M The Two
Faces " — by reason of which I have not hesitated to gather
it in — is thus peculiarly an economic one. It may conceal
rather than exhale its intense little principle of calculation;
but the neat evolution, as I call it, the example of the turn
of the whole coach and pair in the contracted court, without
the "spill" of a single passenger or the derangement of a
single parcel, is only in three or four cases (where the coach
is fuller still) more appreciable.
HENRY JAMES.


CONTENTS
THE ASPERN PAPERS 1
THE TURN OF THE SCREW 145
THE LIAR 311
THE TWO FACES 389





THE ASPERN PAPERS





THE ASPERN PAPERS
i
I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; without
her in truth I should have made but little advance,
for the fruitful idea in the whole business dropped
from her friendly lips. It was she who found the
short cut and loosed the Gordian knot. It is not
supposed easy for women to rise to the large free
view of anything, anything to be done; but they
sometimes throw off a bold conception—such as a
man wouldn't have risen to—with singular serenity.
"Simply make them take you in on the footing of a
lodger" — I don't think that unaided I should have
risen to that. I was beating about the bush, trying
to be ingenious, wondering by what combination of
arts I might become an acquaintance, when she of-
fered this happy suggestion that the way to become
an acquaintance was first to become an intimate. Her
actual knowledge of the Misses Bordereau was
scarcely larger than mine, and indeed I had brought
with me from England some definite facts that were
new to her. Their name had been mixed up ages
before with one of the greatest names of the century,
and they now lived obscurely in Venice, lived on very
small means, unvisited, unapproachable, in a seques-
tered and dilapidated old palace: this was the sub-
stance of my friend's impression of them. She herself
had been established in Venice some fifteen years and
3


THE ASPERN PAPERS
had done a great deal of good there; but the circle of
her benevolence had never embraced the two shy,
mysterious and, as was somehow supposed, scarcely
respectable Americans—they were believed to have
lost in their long exile all national quality, besides
being as their name implied of some remoter French
affiliation—who asked no favours and desired no at-
tention. In the early years of her residence she had
made an attempt to see them, but this had been suc-
cessful only as regards the little one, as Mrs. Prest
called the niece; though in fact I afterwards found
her the bigger of the two in inches. She had heard
Miss Bordereau was ill and had a suspicion she was
in want, and had gone to the house to offer aid, so
that if there were suffering, American suffering in
particular, she shouldn't have it on her conscience.
The "little one" had received her in the great cold
tarnished Venetian sala, the central hall of the house,
paved with marble and roofed with dim cross-beams,
and hadn't even asked her to sit down. This was
not encouraging for me, who wished to sit so fast,
and I remarked as much to Mrs. Prest. She replied
however with profundity "Ah, but there's all the
difference: I went to confer a favour and you '11 go
to ask one. If they're proud you'll be on the right
side." And she offered to show me their house to
begin with — to row me thither in her gondola. I
let her know I had already been to look at it half a
dozen times; but I accepted her invitation, for it
charmed me to hover about the place. I had made
my way to it the day after my arrival in Venice—it had been described to me in advance by the friend 4


THE ASPERN PAPERS
in England to whom I owed definite information as
to their possession of tbe^j^agejs—laying siege to it
with my eyes while I considered my plan of cam-
paign. Jeffrey Aspern had never been in it that I
knew of, but some note of his voice seemed to abide
there by a roundabout implication and in a "dying
fall."
Mrs. Prest knew nothing about the papers, but
was interested in my curiosity, as always in the joys
and sorrows of her friends. As we went, however,
in her gondola, gliding there under the sociable hood
with the bright Venetian picture framed on either
side by the moveable window, I saw how my eagerness
amused her and that she found my interest in my
possible spoil a fine case of monomania. "One would
think you expected from it the answer to the riddle
of the universe," she said; and I denied the impeach-
ment only by replying that if I had to choose between
that precious solution and a bundle of Jeffrey As-
pern's letters I knew indeed which would appear to
me the greater boon. She pretended to make light
of his genius and I took no pains to defend him. One
doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a
defence. Besides, to-day, after his long comparative
obscuration, he hangs high in the heaven of our lit-
erature for all the world to see; he's a part of the
light by which we walk. The most I said was that
he was no doubt not a woman's poet; to which she
rejoined aptly enough that he had been at least Miss
Bordereau's. The strange thing had been for me to
discover in England that she was still alive: it was
as if I had been told Mrs. Siddons was, or Queen 5


THE ASPERN PAPERS
Caroline, or the famous Lady Hamilton, for it seemed
to me that she belonged to a generation as extinct.
"Why she must be tremendously old — at least a
hundred," I had said; but on coming to consider
dates I saw it not strictly involved that she should
have far exceeded the common span. None the less
she was of venerable age and her relations with Jeffrey Aspern had occurred in her early womanhood.
"That's her excuse," said Mrs. Prest half-senten-
tiously and yet also somewhat as if she were ashamed
of making a speech so little in the real tone of Venice.
As if a woman needed an excuse for having loved the
divine poet! He had been not only one of the most
brilliant minds of his day — and in those years, when
the century was young, there were, as every one
knows, many — but one of the most genial men and
one of the handsomest.
The niece, according to Mrs. Prest, was of minor
antiquity, and the conjecture was risked that she was
only a grand-niece. This was possible; I had nothing
but my share in the very limited knowledge of my
English fellow worshipper John Cumnor, who had
never seen the couple. The world, as I say, had re-
cognised Jeffrey Aspern, but Cumnor and I had re-
cognised him most. The multitude to-day flocked
to his temple, but of that temple he and I regarded
ourselves as the appointed ministers. We held, justly,
as I think, that we had done more for his memory
than any one else, and had done it simply by opening
lights into his life. He had nothing to fear from us
because he had nothing to fear from the truth, which
alone at such a distance of time we could be inter6


THE ASPERN PAPERS
ested in establishing. His early death had been the
only dark spot, as it were, on his fame, unless the
papers in Miss Bordereau's hands should perversely
bring out others. There had been an impression
about 1825 that he had "treated her badly," just as
there had been an impression that he had "served,"
as the London populace says, several other ladies in
the same masterful way. Each of these cases Cumnor
and I had been able to investigate, and we had never
failed to acquit him conscientiously of any grossness.
I judged him perhaps more indulgently than my
friend; certainly, at any rate, it appeared to me that
no man could have walked straighter in the given
circumstances. These had been almost always diffi-
cult and dangerous. Half the women of his time, to
speak liberally, had flung themselves at his head, and
while the fury raged — the more that it was very
catching — accidents, some of them grave, had not
failed to occur. He was not a woman's poet, as I had
said to Mrs. Prest, in the modern phase of his reputa-
tion; but the situation had been different when the
man's own voice was mingled with his song. That
voice, by every testimony, was one of the most charm-
ing ever heard. "Orpheus and the Maenads!" had
been of course my foreseen judgement when first I
turned over his correspondence. Almost all the
Maenads were unreasonable and many of them un-
bearable; it struck me that he had been kinder and
more considerate than in his place — if I could im-
agine myself in any such box — I should have found
the trick of. It was certainly strange beyond all strangeness, 7


THE ASPERN PAPERS
and I shall not take up space with attempting to ex-
plain it, that whereas among all these other relations
and in these other directions of research we had to
deal with phantoms and dust, the mere echoes of
echoes, the one living source of information that had
lingered on into our time had been unheeded by us.
Every one of Aspern's contemporaries had, according
to our belief, passed away; we had not been able to
look into a single pair of eyes into which his had
looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged
hand that his had touched. Most dead of all did poor
Miss Bordereau appear, and yet she alone had sur-
vived. We exhausted in the course of months our
wonder that we had not found her out sooner, and
the substance of our explanation was that she had
kept so quiet. The poor lady on the whole had had
reason for doing so. But it was a revelation to us that
self-effacement on such a scale had been possible in
the latter half of the nineteenth century — the age of
newspapers and telegrams and photographs and in-
terviewers. She had taken no great trouble for it
either — had n't hidden herself away in an undis-
coverable hole, had boldly settled down in a city of
exhibition. The one apparent secret of her safety
had been that Venice contained so many much greater
curiosities. And then accident had somehow fav-
oured her, as was shown for example in the fact that
Mrs. Prest had never happened to name her to me,
though I had spent three weeks in Venice — under
her nose, as it were — five years before. My friend
indeed had not named her much to any one; she ap-
peared almost to have forgotten the fact of her con-
8


THE ASPERN PAPERS
tinuance. Of course Mrs. Prest had n't the nerves of
an editor. It was meanwhile no explanation of the
old woman's having eluded us to say that she lived
abroad, for our researches had again and again taken
us—not only by correspondence but by personal
enquiry — to France, to Germany, to Italy, in which
countries, not counting his important stay in Eng-
land, so many of the too few years of Aspern's career
had been spent. We were glad to think at least that
in all our promulgations — some people now consider
I believe that we have overdone them — we had only
touched in passing and in the most discreet manner
on Miss Bordereau's connexion. Oddly enough,
even if we had had the material — and we had often
wondered what could have become of it — this would
have been the most difficult episode to handle.
The gondola stopped, the old palace was there; it was a house of the class which in Venice carries even
in extreme dilapidation the dignified name. "How
charming! It's grey and pink!" my companion ex-
claimed; and that is the most comprehensive de-
scription of it. It was not particularly old, only two
or three centuries; and it had an air not so much of
decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather
missed its career. But its wide front, with a stone
balcony from end to end of the piano nobile or most
important floor, was architectural enough, with the
aid of various pilasters and arches; and the stucco
with which in the intervals it had long ago been en-
dued was rosy in the April afternoon. It overlooked
a clean melancholy rather lonely canal, which had a
narrow riva or convenient footway on either side. 9


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"I don't know why — there are no brick gables,"
said Mrs. Prest, "but this corner has seemed to me
before more Dutch than Italian, more like Amster-
dam than like Venice. It's eccentrically neat, for
reasons of its own; and though you may pass on foot
scarcely any one ever thinks of doing so. It's as nega-
tive — considering where it is — as a Protestant
Sunday. Perhaps the people are afraid of the Misses
Bordereau. I daresay they have the reputation of
witches."
I forget what answer I made to this — I was given
up to two other reflexions. The first of these was
that if the old lady lived in such a big and imposing
house she couldn't be in any sort of misery and there-
fore wouldn't be tempted by a chance to let a couple
of rooms. I expressed this fear to Mrs. Prest, who
gave me a very straight answer. "If she didn't live
in a big house how could it be a question of her having
rooms to spare? If she were not amply lodged you'd
lack ground to approach her. Besides, a big house
here, and especially in this quartier perdu, proves
nothing at all: it's perfectly consistent with a state of
penury. Dilapidated old palazzi, if you '11 go out of
the way for them, are to be had for five shillings a
year. And as for the people who live in them — no,
until you've explored Venice socially as much as I
have, you can form no idea of their domestic desola-
tion. They live on nothing, for they've nothing to
live on." The other idea that had come into my head
was connected with a high blank wall which appeared
to confine an expanse of ground on one side of the
house. Blank I call it, but it was figured over with 10


THE ASPERN PAPERS
the patches that please a painter, repaired breaches,
crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick that had
turned pink with time; while a few thin trees, with
the poles of certain rickety trellises, were visible over
the top. The place was a garden and apparently
attached to the house. I suddenly felt that so at-
tached it gave me my pretext.
I sat looking out on all this with Mrs. Prest (it was
covered with the golden glow of Venice) from the
shade of our felze, and she asked me if I would go in
then, while she waited for me, or come back another
time. At first I couldn't decide — it was doubtless
very weak of me. I wanted still to think I might get a
footing, and was afraid to meet failure, for it would
leave me, as I remarked to my companion, without
another arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she
enquired as I sat there hesitating and thinking it over;
and she wished to know why even now and before
taking the trouble of becoming an inmate — which
might be wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if
it succeeded — I hadn't the resource of simply offer-
ing them a sum of money down. In that way I might
get what I wanted without bad nights.
"Dearest lady," I exclaimed, "excuse the im-
patience of my tone when I suggest that you must
have forgotten the very fact — surely I communi-
cated it to you — which threw me on your ingenuity.
The old woman won't have her relics and tokens so
much as spoken of; they're personal, delicate, inti-
mate, and she hasn't the feelings of the day, God
bless her! If I should sound that note first I should
certainly spoil the game. I can arrive at my spoils ii


THE ASPERN PAPERS
only by putting her off her guard, and I can put her
off her guard only by ingratiating diplomatic arts.
Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I'm sorry
for it, but there's no baseness I wouldn't commit for
Jeffrey Aspern's sake. First I must take tea with her
—then tackle the main job." And I told over what
had happened to John Cumnor on his respectfully
writing to her. No notice whatever had been taken
of his first letter, and the second had been answered
very sharply, in six lines, by the niece. "Miss Bor-
dereau requested her to say that she couldn't im-
agine what he meant by troubling them. They had
none of Mr. Aspern's 'literary remains,' and if they
had had wouldn't have dreamed of showing them to
any one on any account whatever. She couldn't
imagine what he was talking about and begged he
would let her alone." I certainly didn't want to be
met that way.
"Well," said Mrs. Prest after a moment and all
provokingly, "perhaps they really haven't anything.
If they deny it flat how are you sure?"
"John Cumnor's sure, and it would take me long
to tell you how his conviction, or his very strong pre-
sumption — strong enough to stand against the old
lady's not unnatural fib — has built itself up. Be-
sides, he makes much of the internal evidence of the
niece's letter."
"The internal evidence?"
"Her calling him 'Mr. Aspern."'
"I don't see what that proves."
"It proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the
possession of mementoes, of tangible objects. I can't 12


THE ASPERN PAPERS
tell you how that 'Mr.' affects me — how it bridges
over the gulf of time and brings our hero near to me—
nor what an edge it gives to my desire to see Juliana.
You don't say 'Mr.' Shakespeare."
"Would I, any more, if I had a box full of his
letters?"
"Yes, if he had been your lover and some one
wanted them." And I added that John Cumnor was
so convinced, and so all the more convinced by Miss
Bordereau's tone, that he would have come himself
to Venice on the undertaking were it not for the ob-
stacle of his having, for any confidence, to disprove
his identity with the person who had written to them,
which the old ladies would be sure to suspect in spite
of dissimulation and a change of name. If they were
to ask him point-blank if he were not their snubbed
correspondent it would be too awkward for him to
lie; whereas I was fortunately not tied in that way. I
was a fresh hand — I could protest without lying. —
"But you '11 have to take a false name," said Mrs.
Prest. "Juliana lives out of the world as much as it
is possible to live, but she has none the less probably
heard of Mr. Aspern's editors. She perhaps possesses
what you've published."
"I've thought of that," I returned; and I drew out
of my pocket-book a visiting-card neatly engraved
with a well-chosen nom de guerre.
"You're very extravagant — it adds to your im-
morality. You might have done it in pencil or ink,"
said my companion.
"This looks more genuine."
"Certainly you've the courage of your curiosity. 13


THE ASPERN PAPERS
But it will be awkward about your letters; they won't
come to you in that mask."
"My banker will take them in and I shall go every
day to get them. It will give me a little walk."
"Shall you depend all on that?" asked Mrs. Prest.
"Aren't you coming to see me?"
"Oh you'll have left Venice for the hot months
long before there are any results. I'm prepared to
roast all summer — as well as through the long here-
after perhaps you'll say! Meanwhile John Cumnor
will bombard me with letters addressed, in my feigned
name, to the care of the padrona."
"She'll recognise his hand," my companion sug-
gested.
"On the envelope he can disguise it."
"Well, you're a precious pair! Doesn't it occur
to you that even if you're able to say you're not Mr.
Cumnor in person they may still suspect you of being
his emissary?"
"Certainly, and I see only one way to parry that."
"And what may that be?"
I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the
niece."
"Ah," cried my friend, "wait till you see her!"


II
"I must work the garden — I must work the garden,"
I said to myself five minutes later and while I waited,
upstairs, in the long, dusky sala, where the bare
scagliola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the
closed shutters. The place was impressive, yet looked
somehow cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had floated
away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an
hour by some neighbouring water-steps; and I had
been let into the house, after pulling the rusty bell-
wire, by a small red-headed and white-faced maid-
servant, who was very young and not ugly and wore
clicking pattens and a shawl in the fashion of a hood.
She had not contented herself with opening the door
from above by the usual arrangement of a creaking
pulley, though she had looked down at me first from
an upper window, dropping the cautious challenge
which in Italy precedes the act of admission. I was
irritated as a general thing by this survival of medi-
aeval manners, though as so fond, if yet so special, an
antiquarian I suppose I ought to have liked it; but,
with my resolve to be genial from the threshold at
any price, I took my false_card out of my pocket and
held it up to her, smiling as if it were a magic token.
It had the effect of one indeed, for it brought her, as I
say, all the way down. I begged her to hand it to her
mistress, having first written on it in Italian the words:
"Could you very kindly see a gentleman, a travelling
American, for a moment?" The little maid was n't
15


THE ASPERN PAPERS
hostile — even that was perhaps something gained.
She coloured, she smiled and looked both frightened
and pleased. I could see that my arrival was a great
affair, that visits in such a house were rare and that
she was a person who would have liked a bustling
place. When she pushed forward the heavy door
behind me I felt my foot in the citadel and promised
myself ever so firmly to keep it there. She pattered
across the damp stony lower hall and I followed her
up the high staircase — stonier still, as it seemed —
without an invitation. I think she had meant I should
wait for her below, but such was not my idea, and I
took up my station in the sala. She flitted, at the far
end of it, into impenetrable regions, and I looked at
the place with my heart beating as I had known it to
do in dentists' parlours. It had a gloomy grandeur,
but owed its character almost all to its noble shape
and to the fine architectural doors, as high as those
of grand frontages, which, leading into the various
rooms, repeated themselves on either side at intervals.
They were surmounted with old faded painted
escutcheons, and here and there in the spaces between
them hung brown pictures, which I noted as speciously
bad, in battered and tarnished frames that were yet
more desirable than the canvases themselves. With
the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs that
kept their backs to the wall the grand obscure vista
contained little else to minister to effect. It was evi-
dently never used save as a passage, and scantly even
as that. I may add that by the time the door through
which the maid-servant had escaped opened again my
eyes had grown used to the want of light.
16


THE ASPERN PAPERS
I hadn't meanwhile meant by my private ejacula-
tion that I must myself cultivate the soil of the tangled
enclosure which lay beneath the windows, but the lady
who came toward me from the distance over the hard
shining floor might have supposed as much from the
way in which, as I went rapidly to meet her, I ex-
claimed, taking care to speak Italian: "The garden,
the garden — do me the pleasure to tell me if it's
yours!"
She stopped short, looking at me with wonder; and
then, "Nothing here is mine," she answered in Eng-
lish, coldly and sadly.
"Oh you're English; how delightful!" I ingenu-
ously cried. "But surely the garden belongs to the
house?"
"Yes, but the house doesn't belong to me." She
was a long lean pale person, habited apparently in
a dull-coloured dressing-gown, and she spoke very
simply and mildly. She didn't ask me to sit down,
any more than years before — if she were the niece—
she had asked Mrs. Prest, and we stood face to face in
the empty pompous hall.
"Well then, would you kindly tell me to whom I
must address myself? I'm afraid you '11 think me hor-
ribly intrusive, but you know I must have a garden —
upon my honour I must!"
Her face was not young, but it was candid; it was
not fresh, but it was clear. She had large eyes which
were not bright, and a great deal of hair which was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were— pos-
sibly — npji clean. She clasped these members almost
convulsively as, with a confused alarmed look, she *7


THE ASPERN PAPERS
broke out: "Oh don't take it away from us; we like
it ourselves!"
"You have the use of it then?"
"Oh yes. If it wasn't for that —!" And she gave
a wan vague smile.
"Isn't it a luxury, precisely? That's why, intend-
ing to be in Venice some weeks, possibly all summer,
and having some literary work, some reading and
writing to do, so that I must be quiet and yet if pos-
sible a great deal in the open air — that's why I've
felt a garden to be really indispensable. I appeal to
your own experience," I went on with as sociable a
smile as I could risk. "Now can't I look at yours?"
"I don't know, I don't understand," the poor wo-
man murmured, planted there and letting her weak
wonder deal — helplessly enough, as I felt — with my
strangeness.
"I mean only from one of those windows — such
grand ones as you have here — if you '11 let me open
the shutters." And I walked toward the back of the
house. When I had advanced halfway I stopped and
waited as in the belief she would accompany me. I
had been of necessity quite abrupt, but I strove at the
same time to give her the impression of extreme court-
esy. "I've looked at furnished rooms all over the
place, and it seems impossible to find any with a gar-
den attached. Naturally in a place like Venice gardens
are rare. It's absurd if you like, for a man, but I can't
live without flowers."
"There are none to speak of down there." She
came nearer, as if, though she mistrusted me, I had
drawn her by an invisible thread. I went on again, 18


THE ASPERN PAPERS
and she continued as she followed me: "We've a
few, but they're very common. It costs too much to
cultivate them; one has to have a man."
"Why shouldn't I be the man?" I asked. "I'll
work without wages; or rather I '11 put in a gardener.
You shall have the sweetest flowers in Venice."
She protested against this with a small quaver of
sound that might have been at the same time a gush
of rapture for my free sketch. Then she gasped: "We
don't know you — we don't know you."
"You know me as much as I know you; or rather
much more, because you know my name. And if
you're English I'm almost a countryman."
"We're not English," said my companion, watch-
ing me in practical submission while I threw open the
shutters of one of the divisions of the wide high window.
"You speak the language so beautifully: might I
ask what you are?" Seen from above the garden was
in truth shabby, yet I felt at a glance that it had great
capabilities. She made no rejoinder, she was so lost
in her blankness and gentleness, and I exclaimed:
"You don't mean to say you're also by chance Ameri-
can?"
"I don't know. We used to be.""Used to be? Surely you haven't changed?""It's so many years ago. We don't seem to be any-
thing now."
"So many years that you've been living here?
Well, I don't wonder at that; it's a grand old house.
I suppose you all use the garden," I went on, "but I
assure you I shouldn't be in your way. I'd be very
quiet and stay quite in one corner."
19


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"We all use it ?" she repeated after me vaguely, not
coming close to the window but looking at my shoes.
She appeared to think me capable of throwing her out.
"I mean all your family — as many as you are."
"There's only one other than me. She's very old.
She never goes down."
I feel again my thrill at this close identification of
Juliana; in spite of which, however, I kept my head.
"Only one other in all this great house!" I feigned
to be not only amazed but almost scandalised. "Dear
lady, you must have space then to spare!"
"To spare?" she repeated — almost as for the rich
unwonted joy to her of spoken words.
"Why you surely don't live (two quiet women—
I see you are quiet, at any rate) in fifty rooms!" Then
with a burst of hope and cheer I put the question
straight. "Couldn't you for a good rent let me two or
three? That would set me up!"
I had now struck the note that translated my pur-
pose, and I needn't reproduce the whole of the tune
I played. I ended by making my entertainer believe
me an undesigning person, though of course I didn't
even attempt to persuade her I was not an eccentric
one. I repeated that I had studies to pursue; that I
wanted quiet; that I delighted in a garden and had
vainly sought one up and down the city: that I would
undertake that before another month was over the
dear old house should be smothered in flowers. I think
it was the flowers that won my suit, for I afterwards
found that Miss Tina — for such the name of this
high tremulous spinster proved somewhat incongru-
ously to be— had an insatiable appetite for them. 20


THE ASPERN PAPERS
When I speak of my suit as won I mean that before I
left her she had promised me she would refer the ques-
tion to her aunt. I invited information as to who her
aunt might be and she answered "Why Miss Bor-
dereau!" with an air of surprise, as if I might have
been expected to know. There were contradictions
like this in Miss Tina which, as I observed later, con-
tributed to make her rather pleasingly incalculable
and interesting. It was the study of the two ladies to
live so that the world shouldn't talk of them or touch
them, and yet they had never altogether accepted the
idea that it didn't hear of them. In Miss Tina at any
rate a grateful susceptibility to human contact had
not died out, and contact of a limited order there
would be if I should come to live in the house.
"We've never done anything of the sort; we've
never had a lodger or any kind of inmate." So much
as this she made a point of saying to me. "We're very
poor, we live very badly — almost on nothing. The
rooms are very bare — those you might take; they've
nothing at all in them. I don't know how you'd sleep,
how you'd eat."
"With your permission I could easily put in a bed
and a few tables and chairs. C'est la moindre des choses
and the affair of an hour or two. I know a little man
from whom I can hire for a trifle what I should so
briefly want, what I should use; my gondolier can
bring the things round in his boat. Of course in this
great house you must have a second kitchen, and my
servant, who's a wonderfully handy fellow"— this
personage was an evocation of the moment — " can
easily cook me a chop there. My tastes and habits 21


THE ASPERN PAPERS
are of the simplest: I live on flowers!" And then I
ventured to add that if they were very poor it was all
the more reason they should let their rooms. They
were bad economists — I had never heard of such a
waste of material.
I saw in a moment my good lady had never before
been spoken to in any such fashion — with a humor-
ous firmness that didn't exclude sympathy, that was
quite founded on it. She might easily have told me
that my sympathy was impertinent, but this by good
fortune didn't occur to her. I left her with the under-
standing that she would submit the question to her
aunt and that I might come back the next day for their
decision.
"The aunt will refuse; she'll think the whole pro-
ceeding very louche!" Mrs. Prest declared shortly
after this, when I had resumed my place in her gon-
dola. She had put the idea into my head and now —
so little are women to be counted on — she appeared
to take a despondent view of it. Her pessimism pro-
voked me and I pretended to have the best hopes; I
went so far as to boast of a distinct prevision of suc-
cess. Upon this Mrs. Prest broke out: "Oh I see
what's in your head! You fancy you've made such
an impression in five minutes that she's dying for you
to come and can be depended on to bring the old one
round. If you do get in you '11 count it as a triumph."
I did count it as a triumph, but only for the com-
mentator — in the last analysis — not for the man,
who had not the tradition of personal conquest. When
I went back on the morrow the little maid-servant
conducted me straight through the long sala — it 22


THE ASPERN PAPERS
opened there as before in large perspective and was
lighter now, which I thought a good omen— into the
apartment from which the recipient of my former visit
had emerged on that occasion. It was a spacious
shabby parlour with a fine old painted ceiling under
which a strange figure sat alone at one of the windows.
They come back to me now almost with the palpita-
tion they caused, the successive states marking my
consciousness that as the door of the room closed
behind me I was really face to face with the Juliana of
some of Aspern's most exquisite and most renowned
lyrics. I grew used to her afterwards, though never
completely; but as she sat there before me my heart
beat as fast as if the miracle of resurrection had taken
place for my benefit. Her presence seemed somehow
to contain and express his own, and I felt nearer to
him at that first moment of seeingher than I ever had
been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember
my emotions in their order, even including a curious
little tremor that took me when I saw the niece not to
be there. With her, the day before, I had become suf-
ficiently familiar, but it almost exceeded my courage
— much as I had longed for the event — to be left
alone with so terrible a relic as the aunt. She was too
strange, too literally resurgent. Then came a check
from the perception that we weren't really face to face,
inasmuch as she had over her eyes a ,horrible_g^een
shade^wtach^m^d^J^ I be-
lievedforthe instant that she had put it on expressly,
so that from underneath it she might take me all in
without my getting at herself. At the same time it cre-
ated a presumption of some ghastly death's-head lurk23


THE ASPERN PAPERS
ing behind it. The divine Juliana as a grinning skull
— the vision hung there until it passed. Then it came
to me that she was tremendously old — so old that
death might take her at any moment, before I should
have time to compass my end.(The next thought was
a correction to that; it lighted up the situation. She
would die next week, she would die to-morrow —then I could pounce on her possessions and ransack
her drawers. Meanwhile she sat there neither moving
nor speaking. She was very small and shrunken, bent
forward with her hands in her lap. She was dressed
in black and her head was wrapped in a piece of old
black lace which showed no hair.
My emotion keeping me silent she spoke first, and
the remark she made was exactly the most unexpected.


Ill
"Our house is very far from the centre, but the little
canal is very comme il faut."
"It's the sweetest corner of Venice and I can imag-
ine nothing more charming," I hastened to reply. The
old lady's voice was very thin and weak, but it had an
agreeable, cultivated murmur and there was wonder
in the thought that that individual note had been in
Jeffrey Aspern's ear.
"Please to sit down there. I hear very well," she
said quietly, as if perhaps I had been shouting; and
the chair she pointed to was at a certain distance. I
took possession of it, assuring her I was perfectly
aware of my intrusion and of my not having been
properly introduced, and that I could but throw my-
self on her indulgence. Perhaps the other lady, the
one I had had the honour of seeing the day before,
would have explained to her about the garden. That
was literally what had given me courage to take a step
so unconventional. I had fallen in love at sight with
the whole place — she herself was probably so used to
it that she didn't know the impression it was capable
of making on a stranger — and I had felt it really a
case to risk something. Was her own kindness in
receiving me a sign that I was not wholly out in my
calculation? It would make me extremely happy to
think so. I could give her my word of honour that I
was a most respectable inoffensive person and that as 25


THE ASPERN PAPERS
a co-tenant of the palace, so to speak, they would be
barely conscious of my existence. I would conform to
any regulations, any restrictions, if they would only
let me enjoy the garden. Moreover I should be de-
lighted to give her references, guarantees; they would
be of the very best, both in Venice and in England, as
well as in America.
She listened to me in perfect stillness and I felt her
look at me with great penetration, though I could see
only the lower part of her bleached and shrivelled face.
Independently of the refining process of old age it had
a delicacy which once must have been great. She had
been very fair, she had had a wonderful complexion.
She was silent a little after I had ceased speaking;
then she began: "If you're so fond of a garden why
don't you go to terra firma, where there are so many
far better than this?"
"Oh it's the combination!" I answered, smiling;
and then with rather a flight of fancy: "It's the idea
of a garden in the middle of the sea."
"This isn't the middle of the sea; you can't so
much as see the water."
I stared a moment, wondering if she wished to con-
vict me of fraud. "Can't see the water? Why, dear
madam, I can come up to the very gate in my boat."
She appeared inconsequent, for she said vaguely
in reply to this: "Yes, if you've got a boat. I haven't
any; it's many years since I've been in one of the
gondole." She uttered these words as if they designed
a curious far-away craft known to her only by hearsay.
"Let me assure you of the pleasure with which I
would put mine at your service I" I returned. I had 26


THE ASPERN PAPERS
scarcely said this however before I became aware that
the speech was in questionable taste and might also
do me the injury of making me appear too eager, too
possessed of a hidden motive. But the old woman
remained impenetrable and her attitude worried me
by suggesting that she had a fuller vision of me than
I had of her. She gave me no thanks for my some-
what extravagant offer, but remarked that the lady
I had seen the day before was her niece; she would
presently come in. She had asked her to stay away a
little on purpose — had had her reasons for seeing
me first alone. She relapsed into silence and I turned
over the fact of these unmentioned reasons and
the question of what might come yet; also that of
whether I might venture on some judicious remark
in praise of her companion. I went so far as to say
I should be delighted to see our absent friend again:
she had been so very patient with me, considering
how odd she must have thought me — a declaration
which drew from Miss Bordereau another of her
whimsical speeches.
"She has very good manners; I bred her up my-
self!" I was on the point of saying that that ac-
counted for the easy grace of the niece, but I arrested
myself in time, and the next moment the old woman
went on: "I don't care who you may be — I don't
want to know: it signifies very little to-day." This
had all the air of being a formula of dismissal, as if
her next words would be that I might take myself off
now that she had had the amusement of looking on
the face of such a monster of indiscretion. Therefore
I was all the more surprised when she added in her 27


THE ASPERN PAPERS
soft venerable quaver: "You may have as many
rooms as you like — if you '11 pay me a good deal of
money."
I hesitated but an instant, long enough to measure
what she meant in particular by this condition. First
it struck me that she must have really a large sum in
her mind; then I reasoned quickly that her idea of a
large sum would probably not correspond to my own.
My deliberation, I think, was not so visible as to
diminish the promptitude with which I replied: "I
will pay with pleasure and of course in advance what-
ever you may think it proper to ask me."
"Well then, a thousand francs a month," she said
instantly, while her baffling green shade continued
to cover her attitude.
The figure, as they say, was startling and my logic
had been at fault. The sum she had mentioned was,
by the Venetian measure of such matters, exceedingly
large; there was many an old palace in an out-of-the-
way corner that I might on such terms have enjoyed
the whole of by the year. But so far as my resources
allowed I was prepared to spend money, and my de-
cision was quickly taken. I would pay her with a
smiling face what she asked, but in that case I would
make it up by getting hold of my " spoils " for nothing.
Moreover if she had asked five times as much I should
have risen to the occasion, so odious would it have
seemed to me to stand chaffering with Aspern's
Juliana. It was queer enough to have a question of
money with her at all. I assured her that her views
perfectly met my own and that on the morrow I
should have the pleasure of putting three months'
a8


THE ASPERN PAPERS
rent into her hand. She received this announcement
with apparent complacency and with no discoverable
sense that after all it would become her to say that I
ought to see the rooms first. This did n't occur to
her, and indeed her serenity was mainly what I
wanted. Our little agreement was just concluded
when the door opened and the younger lady appeared
on the threshold. As soon as Miss Bordereau saw
her niece she cried out almost gaily: "He'll give
three thousand — three thousand to-morrow!"
Miss Tina stood still, her patient eyes turning
from one of us to the other; then she brought out,
scarcely above her breath: "Do you mean francs?"
"Did you mean francs or dollars ?" the old woman
asked of me at this.
"I think francs were what you said," I sturdily
smiled.
"That's very good," said Miss Tina, as if she had
felt how overreaching her own question might have
looked.
"What do you know? You're ignorant," Miss
Bordereau remarked; not with acerbity but with a
strange soft coldness.
"Yes, of money — certainly of money!" Miss
Tina hastened to concede.
"I'm sure you've your own fine branches of know-
ledge," I took the liberty of saying genially. There
was something painful to me, somehow, in the turn
the conversation had taken, in the discussion of
dollars and francs.
"She had a very good education when she was
young. I looked into that myself," said Miss Bor29


THE ASPERN PAPERS
dereau. Then she added: "But she has learned
nothing since."
"I've always been with you," Miss Tina rejoined
very mildly, and of a certainty with no intention of
an epigram.
"Yes, but for that—!" her aunt declared with
more satirical force. She evidently meant that but
for this her niece would never have got on at all; the
point of the observation however being lost on Miss
Tina, though she blushed at hearing her history re-
vealed to a stranger. Miss Bordereau went on, ad-
dressing herself to me: "And what time will you come
to-morrow with the money?"
"The sooner the better. If it suits you I '11 come at
noon."
"I'm always here, but I have my hours," said the
old woman as if her convenience were not to be taken
for granted.
"You mean the times when you receive?"
"I never receive. But I'll see you at noon, when
you come with the money."
"Very good, I shall be punctual." To which I
added: "May I shake hands with you on our con-
tract?" I thought there ought to be some little form;
it would make me really feel easier, for I was sure
there would be no other. Besides, though Miss Bor-
dereau couldn't to-day be called personally attract-
ive and there was something even in her wasted
antiquity that bade one stand at one's distance, I
felt an irresistible desire to hold in my own for a mo-
ment the hand Jeffrey Aspern had pressed.
For a minute she made no answer, and I saw that 3°


THE ASPERN PAPERS
my proposal failed to meet with her approbation.
She indulged in no movement of withdrawal, which
I half-expected; she only said coldly: "I belong to a
time when that was not the custom."
I felt rather snubbed but I exclaimed good-hu-
mouredly to Miss Tina "Oh you'll do as well!" I
shook hands with her while she assented with a small
flutter. "Yes, yes, to show it's all arranged!"
"Shall you bring the money in gold?" Miss Bor-
dereau demanded as I was turning to the door.
I looked at her a moment. "Aren't you a little
afraid, after all, of keeping such a sum as that in the
house?" It was not that I was annoyed at her avidity,
but was truly struck with the disparity between such
a treasure and such scanty means of guarding it.
"Whom should I be afraid of if I'm not afraid of
you ?" she asked with her shrunken grimness.
"Ah well," I laughed, "I shall be in point of fact
a protector and I '11 bring gold if you prefer."
"Thank you," the old woman returned with dignity
and with an inclination of her head which evidently
signified my dismissal. I passed out of the room,
thinking how hard it would be to circumvent her.
As I stood in the sala again I saw that Miss Tina
had followed me, and I supposed that as her aunt
had neglected to suggest I should take a look at my
quarters it was her purpose to repair the omission.
But she made no such overture; she only stood there
with a dim, though not a languid smile, and with an
effect of irresponsible incompetent youth almost
comically at variance with the faded facts of her per-
son. She was not infirm, like her aunt, but she struck 31


THE ASPERN PAPERS
me as more deeply futile, because her inefficiency
was inward, which was not the case with Miss Bor-
dereau's. I waited to see if she would offer to show
me the rest of the house, but I didn't precipitate the
question, inasmuch as my plan was from this mo-
ment to spend as much of my time as possible in her
society. A minute indeed elapsed before I committed
myself.
"I've had better fortune than I hoped. It was
very kind of her to see me. Perhaps you said a good
word for me."
"It was the idea of the money," said Miss Tina."And did you suggest that?""I told her you'd perhaps pay largely.""What made you think that?""I told her I thought you were rich.""And what put that into your head?""I don't know; the way you talked.""Dear me, I must talk differently now," I returned.
"I'm sorry to say it's not the case."
"Well," said Miss Tina, "I think that in Venice
the forestieri in general often give a great deal for
something that after all isn't much." She appeared
to make this remark with a comforting intention, to
wish to remind me that if I had been extravagant I
wasn't foolishly singular. We walked together along
the sala, and as I took its magnificent measure I
observed that I was afraid it wouldn't form a part of
my quartiere. Were my rooms by chance to be among
those that opened into it? "Not if you go above—
to the second floor," she answered as if she had rather
taken for granted I would know my proper place.
32


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"And I infer that that's where your aunt would
like me to be."
"She said your apartments ought to be very dis-
tinct."
"That certainly would be best." And I listened
with respect while she told me that above I should
be free to take whatever I might like; that there was
another staircase, but only from the floor on which
we stood, and that to pass from it to the garden-level
or to come up to my lodging I should have in effect
to cross the great hall. This was an immense point
gained; I foresaw that it would constitute my whole
leverage in my relations with the two ladies. When
I asked Miss Tina how I was to manage at present
to find my way up she replied with an access of that
sociable shyness which constantly marked her manner:
"Perhaps you can't. I don't see — unless I should
go with you." She evidently hadn't thought of this
before.
We ascended to the upper floor and visited a long
succession of empty rooms. The best of them looked
over the garden; some of the others had above the
opposite rough-tiled house-tops a view of the blue
lagoon. They were all dusty and even a little dis-
figured with long neglect, but I saw that by spending
a few hundred francs I should be able to make three
or four of them habitable enough. My experiment was
turning out costly, yet now that I had all but taken
possession I ceased to allow this to trouble me. I
mentioned to my companion a few of the things I
should put in, but she replied rather more precipi-
tately than usual that I might do exactly what I liked: 33


THE ASPERN PAPERS
she seemed to wish to notify me that the Misses Bor-
dereau would take none but the most veiled interest in
my proceedings. I guessed that her aunt had instructed
her to adopt this tone, and I may as well say now that
I came afterwards to distinguish perfectly (as I be-
lieved) between the speeches she made on her own
responsibility and those the old woman imposed upon
her. She took no notice of the unswept condition of
the rooms and indulged neither in explanations nor
in apologies. I said to myself that this was a sign
Juliana and her niece — disenchanting idea!— were
untidy persons with a low Italian standard; but I
afterwards recognised that a lodger who had forced
an entrance had no locus standi as a critic. We looked
out of a good many windows, for there was nothing
within the rooms to look at, and still I wanted to
linger. I asked her what several different objects in
the prospect might be, but in no case did she appear
to know. She was evidently not familiar with the
view—it was as if she had not looked at it for years
— and I presently saw that she was too preoccupied
with something else to pretend to care for it. Sud-
denly she said — the remark was not suggested:
"I don't know whether it will make any difference
to you, but the money is for me."
"The money —?"
"The money you 're going to bring."
"Why you'll make me wish to stay here two or
three years!" I spoke as benevolently as possible,
though it had begun to act on my nerves that these
women so associated with Aspern should so constantly bring the pecuniary question back.
34


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"That would be very good for me," she answered
almost gaily.
"You put me on my honour!"
She looked as if she failed to understand this, but
went on: "She wants me to have more. She thinks
she's going to die."
"Ah not soon I hope!" I cried with genuine feeling.
I had perfectly considered the possibility of her de-
stroying her documents on the day she should feel
her end at hand. I believed that she would cling to
them till then, and I was as convinced of her reading
Aspern's letters over every night or at least pressing
them to her withered lips. I would have given a good
deal for some view of those solemnities. I asked
Miss Tina if her venerable relative were seriously ill,
and she replied that she was only very tired — she
had lived so extraordinarily long. That was what
she said herself — she wanted to die for a change.
Besides, all her friends had been dead for ages; either
they ought to have remained or she ought to have
gone. That was another thing her aunt often said:
she was not at all resigned — resigned, that is, to
life.
"But people don't die when they like, do they?"
Miss Tina enquired. I took the liberty of asking why,
if there was actually enough money to maintain both
of them, there would not be more than enough in
case of her being left alone. She considered this dif-
ficult problem a moment and then said: "Oh well,
you know, she takes care of me. She thinks that
when I'm alone I shall be a great fool and shan't
know how to manage."
35


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"I should have supposed rather that you took care
of her. I'm afraid she's very proud."
"Why, have you discovered that already?" Miss
Tina cried with a dimness of glad surprise.
"I was shut up with her there for a considerable
time and she struck me, she interested me extremely.
It didn't take me long to make my discovery. She
won't have much to say to me while I'm here."
"No, I don't think she will," my companion
averred.
"Do you suppose she has some suspicion of me?"
Miss Tina's honest eyes gave me no sign I had
touched a mark. "I should n't think so — letting
you in after all so easily."
"You call it easily? She has covered her risk," I
said. "But where is it one could take an advantage
of her?"
"I oughtn't to tell you if I knew, ought I?" And
Miss Tina added, before I had time to reply to this,
smiling dolefully: "Do you think we've any weak
points?"
"That's exactly what I'm asking. You'd only
have to mention them for me to respect them re-
ligiously."
She looked at me hereupon with that air of timid
but candid and even gratified curiosity with which
she had confronted me from the first; after which she
said: "There's nothing to tell. We 're terribly quiet.
I don't know how the days pass. We've no life."
"I wish I might think I should bring you a little."
"Oh we know what we want," she went on. "It's
all right."
36


THE ASPERN PAPERS
There were twenty things I desired to ask her:
how in the world they did live; whether they had any
friends or visitors, any relations in America or in other
countries. But I judged such probings premature;
I must leave it to a later chance. "Well, don't you
be proud," I contented myself with saying. "Don't
hide from me altogether."
"Oh I must stay with my aunt," she returned
without looking at me. And at the same moment,
abruptly, without any ceremony of parting, she
quitted me and disappeared, leaving me to make my
own way downstairs. I stayed a while longer, wan-
dering about the bright desert — the sun was pouring
in — of the old house, thinking the situation over
on the spot. Not even the pattering little serva came
to look after me, and I reflected that after all this
treatment showed confidence.


IV
Perhaps it did, but all the same, six weeks later,
towards the middle of June, the moment when Mrs.
Prest undertook her annual migration, I had made
no measurable advance. I was obliged to confess to
her that I had no results to speak of. My first step
had been unexpectedly rapid, but there was no ap-
pearance it would be followed by a second. I was a
thousand miles from taking tea with my hostesses —that privilege of which, as I reminded my good friend,
we both had had a vision. She reproached me with
lacking boldness and I answered that even to be bold
you must have an opportunity: you may push on
through a breach, but you can't batter down a dead
wall. She returned that the breach I had already
made was big enough to admit an army and accused
me of wasting precious hours in whimpering in her
salon when I ought to have been carrying on the
struggle in the field. It is true that I went to see her
very often — all on the theory that it would console
me (I freely expressed my discouragement) for my
want of success on my own premises. But I began to
feel that it didn't console me to be perpetually chaffed
for my scruples, especially since I was really so vig-
ilant; and I was rather glad when my ironic friend
closed her house for the summer. She had expected
to draw amusement from the drama of my inter-
course with the Misses Bordereau, and was disap38


THE ASPERN PAPERS
pointed that the intercourse, and consequently the
drama, had not come off. "They'll lead you on to
your ruin," she said before she left Venice. "They'll
get all your money without showing you a scrap."
I think I settled down to my business with more con-
centration after her departure.
It was a fact that up to that time I had not, save
on a single brief occasion, had even a moment's con-
tact with my queer hostesses. The exception had
occurred when I carried them according to my pro-
mise the terrible three thousand francs. Then I
found Miss Tina awaiting me in the hall, and she
took the money from my hand with a promptitude
that prevented my seeing her aunt. The old lady had
promised to receive me, yet apparently thought no-
thing of breaking that vow. The money was con-
tained in a bag of chamois leather, of respectable
dimensions, which my banker had given me, and
Miss Tina had to make a big fist to receive it. This
she did with extreme solemnity, though I tried to
treat the affair a little as a joke. It was in no jocular
strain, yet it was with a clearness akin to a brightness
that she enquired, weighing the money in her two
palms: "Don't you think it's too much?" To which
I replied that this would depend on the amount of
pleasure I should get for it. Hereupon she turned
away from me quickly, as she had done the day be-
fore, murmuring in a tone different from any she had
used hitherto: "Oh pleasure, pleasure — there's no
pleasure in this house!"
After that, for a long time, I never saw her, and I
wondered the common chances of the day should n't 39


THE ASPERN PAPERS
have helped us to meet. It could only be evident that
she was immensely on her guard against them; and
in addition to this the house was so big that for each
other we were lost in it. I used to look out for her
hopefully as I crossed the sala in my comings and
goings, but I was not rewarded with a glimpse of the
tail of her dress. It was as if she never peeped out of
her aunt's apartment. I used to wonder what she
did there week after week and year after year. I had
never met so stiff a policy of seclusion; it was more
than keeping quiet — it was like hunted creatures
feigning death. The two ladies appeared to have no
visitors whatever and no sort of contact with the
world. I judged at least that people couldn't have
come to the house and that Miss Tina couldn't have
gone out without my catching some view of it. I
did what I disliked myself for doing — considering
it but as once in a way: I questioned my servant about
their habits and let him infer that I should be inter-
ested in any information he might glean. But he
gleaned amazingly little for a knowing Venetian: it
must be added that where there is a perpetual fast
there are very few crumbs on the floor. His ability
in other ways was sufficient, if not quite all I had
attributed to him on the occasion of my first inter-
view with Miss Tina. He had helped my gondolier
to bring me round a boat-load of furniture; and when
these articles had been carried to the top of the palace
and distributed according to our associated wisdom
he organised my household with such dignity as
answered to its being composed exclusively of himself. He made me in short as comfortable as I could be 40


THE ASPERN PAPERS
with my indifferent prospects. I should have been
glad if he had fallen in love with Miss Bordereau's
maid or, failing this, had taken her in aversion: either
event might have brought about some catastrophe,
and a catastrophe might have led to some parley. It
was my idea that she would have been sociable, and
I myself on various occasions saw her flit to and fro
on domestic errands, so that I was sure she was ac-
cessible. But I tasted of no gossip from that fountain,
and I afterwards learned that Pasquale's affections
were fixed upon an object that made him heedless of
other women. This was a young lady with a pow-
dered face, a yellow cotton gown and much leisure,
who used often to come to see him. She practised,
at her convenience, the art of a stringer of beads —
these ornaments are made in Venice to profusion;
she had her pocket full of them and I used to find
them on the floor of my apartment — and kept an
eye on the possible rival in the house. It was not for
me of course to make the domestics tattle, and I
never said a word to Miss Bordereau's cook.
It struck me as a proof of the old woman's resolve
to have nothing to do with me that she should never
have sent me a receipt for my three months' rent. For
some days I looked out for it and then, when I had
given it up, wasted a good deal of time in wondering
what her reason had been for neglecting so indispens-
able and familiar a form. At first I was tempted to
send her a reminder; after which I put by the idea —
against my judgement as to what was right in the par-
ticular case — on the general ground of wishing to
keep quiet. If Miss Bordereau suspected me of ulte4i


THE ASPERN PAPERS
rior aims she would suspect me less if I should be busi-
nesslike, and yet I consented not to be. It was pos-
sible she intended her omission as an impertinence, a
visible irony, to show how she could overreach people
who attempted to overreach her. On that hypothesis
it was well to let her see that one didn't notice her
little tricks. The real reading of the matter, I after-
wards gathered, was simply the poor lady's desire to
emphasise the fact that I was in the enjoyment of a
favour as rigidly limited as it had been liberally be-
stowed. She had given me part of her house, but she
wouldn't add to that so much as a morsel of paper
with her name on it. Let me say that even at first this
didn't make me too miserable, for the whole situation
had the charm of its oddity. I foresaw that I should
have a summer after my own literary heart, and the
sense of playing with my opportunity was much
greater after all than any sense of being played with.
There could be no Venetian business without patience,
and since I adored the place I was much more in the
spirit of it for having laid in a large provision. That
spirit kept me perpetual company and seemed to look
out at me from the revived immortal face — in which
all his genius shone — of the great poet who was my
prompter. I had invoked him and he had come; he
hovered before me half the time; it was as if his bright
ghost had returned to earth to assure me he regarded
the affair as his own no less than as mine and that we
should see it fraternally and fondly to a conclusion.
It was as if he had said: "Poor dear, be easy with her;
she has some natural prejudices; only give her time.
Strange as it may appear to you she was very attract42


THE ASPERN PAPERS
ive in 1820. Meanwhile are n't we in Venice together,
and what better place is there for the meeting of dear
friends? See how it glows with the advancing sum-
mer; how the sky and the sea and the rosy air and the
marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together."
My eccentric private errand became a part of the
general romance and the general glory — I felt even
a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all
those who in the past had been in the service of art.
They had worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what
else was I doing? That element was in everything
that Jeffrey Aspern had written, and I was only bring-
ing it to light.
I lingered in the sala when I went to and fro; I used
to watch — as long as I thought decent — the door
that led to Miss Bordereau's part of the house. A
person observing me might have supposed I was
trying to cast a spell on it or attempting some odd
experiment in hypnotism. But I was only praying it
might open or thinking what treasure probably lurked
behind it. I hold it singular, as I look back, that I
should never have doubted for a moment that the
sacred relics were there; never have failed to know the
joy of being beneath the same roof with them. After
all they were under my hand — they had not escaped
me yet; and they made my life continuous, in a fashion,
with the illustrious life they had touched at the other
end. I lost myself in this satisfaction to the point of
assuming — in my quiet extravagance— that poor
Miss Tina also went back, and still went back, as I
used to phrase it. She did indeed, the gentle spinster,
but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern, who was simple 43


THE ASPERN PAPERS
hearsay to her quite as he was to me. Only she had
lived for years with Juliana, she had seen and handled
all mementoes and — even though she was stupid —
some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her. That
was what the old woman represented — esoteH£
knowledge; and this was the idea with which my
critical heart used to thrill. It literally beat faster
often, of an evening when I had been out, as I stopped
with my candle in the re-echoing hall on my way up
to bed. It was as if at such a moment as that, in the
stillness and after the long contradiction of the day,
Miss Bordereau's secrets were in the air, the wonder
of her survival more vivid. These were the acute
impressions. I had them in another form, with more
of a certain shade of reciprocity, during the hours I sat
in the garden looking up over the top of my book at
the closed windows of my hostess. In these windows
no sign of life ever appeared; it was as if, for fear of
my catching a glimpse of them, the two ladies passed
their days in the dark. But this only emphasised their
having matters to conceal; which was what I had
wished to prove. Their motionless shutters became as
expressive as eyes consciously closed, and I took com-
fort in the probability that, though invisible them-
selves, they kept me in view between the lashes.
I made a point of spending as much time as pos-
sible in the garden, to justify the picture I had origin-
ally given of my horticultural passion. And I not only
spent time, but (hang it! as I said) spent precious
money. As soon as I had got my rooms arranged and
could give the question proper thought I surveyed the
place with a clever expert and made terms for having 44


THE ASPERN PAPERS
it put in order. I was sorry to do this, for personally I
liked it better as it was, with its weeds and its wild rich
tangle, its sweet characteristic Venetian shabbiness.
I had to be consistent, to keep my promise that I
would smother the house in flowers. Moreover I
clung to the fond fancy that by flowers I should make
my way — I should succeed by big nosegays. I would
batter the old women with lilies — I would bombard
their citadel with roses. Their door would have to
yield to the pressure when a mound of fragrance
should be heaped against it. The place in truth had
been brutally neglected. The Venetian capacity for
dawdling is of the largest, and for a good many days
unlmiit£diiuer_was all mj^gardener had to show fnr
Ris~n^istraiions7^1here was a great digging of holes
ancTcarting about of earth, and after a while I grew
so impatient that I had thoughts of sending for my
"results" to the nearest stand. But I felt sure my
friends would see through the chinks of their shutters
where such tribute couldn't have been gathered, and
might so make up their minds against my veracity.
I possessed my soul and finally, though the delay
was long, perceived some appearances of bloom. This
encouraged me and I waited serenely enough till they
multiplied. Meanwhile the real summer days arrived
and began to pass, and as I look back upon them they
seem to me almost the happiest of my life. Ttook
more and more care to be in the garden whenever it
was not too hot. I had an arbour arranged and a low
table and an armchair put into it; and I carried out
books and portfolios — I had always some business
of writing in hand — and worked and waited and 45


THE ASPERN PAPERS
mused and hoped, while the golden hours elapsed and
the plants drank in the light and the inscrutable old
palace turned pale and then, as the day waned, began
to recover and flush and my papers rustled in the
wandering breeze of the Adriatic.
Considering how little satisfaction I got from it at
first it is wonderful I shouldn't have grown more tired
of trying to guess what mystic rites of ennui the Misses
Bordereau celebrated in their darkened rooms;
whether this had always been the tenor of their life
and how in previous years they had escaped elbowing
their neighbours. It was supposable they had then
had other habits, forms and resources; that they must
once have been young or at least middle-aged. There
was no end to the questions it was possible to ask
about them and no end to the answers it was not
possible to frame. I had known many of my country-
people in Europe and was familiar with the strange
ways they were liable to take up there; but the Misses
Bordereau formed altogether a new type of the Ameri-
,can absentee. Indeed it was clear the American name
had ceased to have any application to them — I had
seen this in the ten minutes I spent in the old wo-
man's room. You could never have said whence they
came from the appearance of either of them; wherever
it was they had long ago shed and unlearned all native
marks and notes. There was nothing in them one
recognised or fitted, and, putting the question of
speech aside, they might have been Norwegians or
Spaniards. Miss Bordereau, after all, had been in
Europe nearly three quarters of a century; it appeared
by some verses addressed to her by Aspern on the 46


THE ASPERN PAPERS
occasion of his own second absence from America —
verses of which Cumnor and I had after infinite con-
jecture established solidly enough the date — that she
was even then, as a girl of twenty, on the foreign side
of the sea. There was a profession in the poem — I
hope not just for the phrase — that he had come back
for her sake. We had no real light on her circum-
stances at that moment, any more than we had upon
her origin, which we believed to be of the sort usually
spoken of as modest. Cumnor had a theory that she
had been a governess in some family in which the poet
visited and that, in consequence of her position, there
was from the first something unavowed, or rather
something quite clandestine, in their relations. I on
the other hand had hatched a little romance accord-
ing to which she was the daughter of an artist, a
painter or a sculptor, who had left the Western world,
when the century was fresh, to study in the ancient
schools. It was essential to my hypothesis that this
amiable man should have lost his wife, should have
been poor and unsuccessful and should have had
a second daughter of a disposition quite different
from Juliana's. It was also indispensable that he
should have been accompanied to Europe by these
young ladies and should have established himself
there for the remainder of a struggling saddened life.
There was a further implication that Miss Border-
eau had had in her youth a perverse and reckless,
albeit a generous and fascinating character, and that
she had braved some wondrous chances. By what
passions had she been ravaged, by what adventures
and sufferings had she been blanched, what store of 47


THE ASPERN PAPERS
memories had she laid away for the monotonous
future?
I asked myself these things as I sat spinning theories
about her in my arbour and the bees droned in the
flowers. It was incontestable that, whether for right
or for wrong, most readers of certain of Aspern's
poems (poems not as ambiguous as the sonnets —
scarcely more divine, I think — of Shakespeare) had
taken for granted that Juliana had not always ad-
hered to the steep footway of renunciation. There
hovered about her name a perfume of impenitent pas-
sion, an intimation that she had not been exactly as
the respectable young person in general. Was this a
sign that her singer had betrayed her, had given her
away, as we say nowadays, to posterity? Certain it
is that it would have been difficult to put one's finger
on the passage in which her fair fame suffered injury.
Moreover was not any fame fair enough that was so
sure of duration and was associated with works im-
mortal through their beauty? It was a part of my
idea that the young lady had had a foreign lover —
and say an unedifying tragical rupture ■<— before her
meeting with Jeffrey Aspern. She had lived with her
father and sister in a queer old-fashioned expatriated
artistic Bohemia of the days when the aesthetic was
only the academic and the painters who knew the best
models for contadina and pifferaro wore peaked hats
and long hair. It was a society less awake than the
coteries of to-day— in its ignorance of the wonderful
chances, the opportunities of the early bird, with
which its path was strewn — to tatters of old stuff
and fragments of old crockery; so that Miss Bordereau 48


THE ASPERN PAPERS
appeared not to have picked up or have inherited many
objects of importance. There was no enviable bric-a-brac, with its provoking legend of cheapness, in the
room in which I had seen her. Such a fact as that sug-
gested bareness, but none the less it worked happily
into the sentimental interest I had always taken in the
early movements of my countrymen as visitors to
Europe. When Americans went abroad in 1820 there
was something romantic, almost heroic in it, as com-
pared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour,
the hour at which photography and other conven-
iences have annihilated surprise. Miss Bordereau had
sailed with her family on a tossing brig in the days of
long voyages and sharp differences; she had had her
emotions on the top of yellow diligences, passed the
night at inns where she dreamed of travellers' tales,
and was most struck, on reaching the Eternal City,
with the elegance of Roman pearls and scarfs and
mosaic brooches. There was something touching to
me in all that, and my imagination frequently went
back to the period. If Miss Bordereau carried it there
of course Jeffrey Aspern had at other times done so
with greater force. It was a much more important
fact, if one was looking at his genius critically, that
he had lived in the days before the general transfusion.
It had happened to me to regret that he had known
Europe at all; I should have liked to see what he would
have written without that experience, by which he had
incontestably been enriched. But as his fate had ruled
otherwise I went with him — I tried to judge how the
general old order would have struck him. It was not
only there, however, I watched him; the relations he 49


THE ASPERN PAPERS
had entertained with the special new had even a live-
lier interest. His own country after all had had most
of his life, and his muse, as they said at that time, was
essentially American. That was originally what I had
prized him for: that at a period when our native land
was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous
"atmosphere" it is supposed to lack was not even
missed, when literature was lonely there and art and
form almost impossible, he had found means to live
and write like one of the first; to be free and general
and not at all afraid; to feel, understand and express
everything.


V
I was seldom at home in the evening, for when I
attempted to occupy myself in my apartments the
lamplight brought in a swarm of noxious insects, and
it was too hot for closed windows. Accordingly I
spent the late hours either on the water — the moon-
lights of Venice are famous — or in the splendid
square which serves as a vast forecourt to the strange
old church of Saint Mark. I sat in front of Florian's
cafe eating ices, listening to music, talking with
acquaintances: the traveller will remember how the
immense cluster of tables and little chairs stretches
like a promontory into the smooth lake of the Piazza.
The whole place, of a summer's evening, under the
stars and with all the lamps, all the voices and light
footsteps on marble — the only sounds of the immense
arcade that encloses it — is an open-air saloon dedi-
cated to cooling drinks and to a still finer degustation,
that of the splendid impressions received during the
day. When I didn't prefer to keep mine to myself
there was always a stray tourist, disencumbered of
his Badeker, to discuss them with, or some domesti-
cated painter rejoicing in the return of the season of
strong effects. The great basilica, with its low domes
and bristling embroideries, the mystery of its mosaic
and sculpture, looked ghostly in the tempered gloom,
and the sea-breeze passed between the twin columns
of the Piazzetta,the lintels of a door no longer guarded,
5i


THE AS PERN PAPERS
as gently as if a rich curtain swayed there. I used
sometimes on these occasions to think of the Misses
Bordereau and of the pity of their being shut up in
apartments which in the Venetian July even Venetian
vastness couldn't relieve of some stuffiness. Their life
seemed miles away from the life of the Piazza, and no
doubt it was really too late to make the austere Ju-
liana change her habits. But poor Miss Tina would
have enjoyed one of Florian's ices, I was sure; some-
times I even had thoughts of carrying one home to her.
Fortunately my patience bore fruit and I was not
obliged to do anything so ridiculous.
One evening about the middle of July I came in
earlier than usual — I forget what chance had led to
this — and instead of going up to my quarters made
my way into the garden. The temperature was very
high; it was such a night as one would gladly have
spent in the open air, and I was in no hurry to go to
bed. I had floated home in my gondola, listening to
the slow splash of the oar in the dark narrow canals,
and now the only thought that occupied me was that it
would be good to recline at one's length in the fragrant
darkness on a garden-bench. The odour of the canal
was doubtless at the bottom of that aspiration, and the
breath of the garden, as I entered it, gave consistency
to my purpose. It was delicious —just such an air
as must have trembled with Romeo's vows when he
stood among the thick flowers and raised his arms to
his mistress's balcony. I looked at the windows of the
palace to see if by chance the example of Verona —
Verona being not far ofF—had been followed; but
everything was dim, as usual, and everything. was
52


THE ASPERN PAPERS
still. Juliana might on the summer nights of her youth
have murmured down from open windows at Jeffrey
Aspern, but Miss Tina was not a poet's mistress any
more than I was a poet. This however did n't prevent
my gratification from being great as I became aware
on reaching the end of the garden that my younger
padrona was seated in one of the bowers. At first I
made out but an indistinct figure, not in the least
counting on such an overture from one of my hostesses;
it even occurred to me that some enamoured maid-
servant had stolen in to keep a tryst with her sweet-
heart. I was going to turn away, not to frighten her,
when the figure rose to its height and I recognised
Miss Bordereau's niece. I must do myself the justice
that I didn't wish to frighten her either, and much
as I had longed for some such accident I should have
been capable of retreating. It was as if I had laid a
trap for her by coming home earlier than usual and
by adding to that oddity my invasion of the garden.
As she rose she spoke to me, and then I guessed that
perhaps, secure in my almost inveterate absence, it
was her nightly practice to take a lonely airing. There
was no trap in truth, because I had had no suspicion.
At first I took the words she uttered for an impatience
of my arrival; but as she repeated them — I hadn't
caught them clearly — I had the surprise of hearing
her say: "Oh dear, I'm so glad you've come!" She
and her aunt had in common the property of unex-
pected speeches. She came out of the arbour almost
as if to throw herself in my arms.
I hasten to add that I escaped this ordeal and that
she didn't even then shake hands with me. It was an 53


THE ASPERN PAPERS
ease to her to see me and presently she told me why —
because she was nervous when out-of-doors at night
alone. The plants and shrubs looked so strange in the
dark, and there were all sorts of queer sounds— she
couldn't tell what they were — like the noises of ani-
mals. She stood close to me, looking about her with an
air of greater security but without any demonstration
of interest in me as an individual. Then I felt how
little nocturnal prowlings could have been her habit,
and I was also reminded — I had been afflicted by the
same in talking with her before I took possession —
that it was impossible to allow too much for her
simplicity.
"You speak as if you were lost in the backwoods,"
I cheeringly laughed. "Howyou manage to keep out
of this charming place when you've only three steps
to take to get into it is more than I've yet been able
to discover. You hide away amazingly so long as I'm
on the premises, I know; but I had a hope you peeped
out a little at other times. You and your poor aunt
are worse off than Carmelite nuns in their cells.
Should you mind telling me how you exist without air,
without exercise, without any sort of human contact?
I don't see how you carry on the common business of
life."
She looked at me as if I had spoken a strange tongue,
and her answer was so little of one that I felt it make
for irritation. "We go to bed very early— earlier
than you'd believe." I was on the point of saying that
this only deepened the mystery, but she gave me some
relief by adding: "Before you came we weren't so
private. But I've never been out at night."
54


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Never in these fragrant alleys, blooming here
under your nose?"
"Ah," said Miss Tina, "they were never nice till
now!" There was a finer sense in this and a flattering
comparison, so that it seemed to me I had gained
some advantage. As I might follow that further by
establishing a good grievance I asked her why, since
she thought my garden nice, she had never thanked
me in any way for the flowers I had been sending up
in such quantities for the previous three weeks. I had
not been discouraged — there had been, as she would
have observed, a daily armful; but I had been brought
up in the common forms and a word of recognition
now and then would have touched me in the right
place.
"Why I didn't know they were for me!"
"They were for both of you. Why should I make
a difference?"
Miss Tina reflected as if she might be thinking of
a reason for that, but she failed to produce one. In-
stead of this she asked abruptly: "Why in the world
do you want so much to know us?"
"I ought after all to make a difference," I replied.
"That question's your aunt's; it isn't yours. You
wouldn't ask it if you hadn't been put up to it."
"She didn't tell me to ask you," Miss Tina re-
plied without confusion. She was indeed the oddest
mixture of shyness and straightness.
"Well, she has often wondered about it herself
and expressed her wonder to you. She has insisted
on it, so that she has put the idea into your head that
I'm insufferably pushing. Upon my word I think 55


THE ASPERN PAPERS
I've been very discreet. And how completely your
aunt must have lost every tradition of sociability, to
see anything out of the way in the idea that respect-
able intelligent people, living as we do under the
same roof, should occasionally exchange a remark!
What could be more natural? We 're of the same
country and have at least some of the same tastes,
since, like you, I'm intensely fond of Venice."
My friend seemed incapable of grasping more than
one clause in any proposition, and she now spoke
quickly, eagerly, as if she were answering my whole
speech. "I'm not in the least fond of Venice. I
should like to go far away!"
"Has she always kept you back so?" I went on,
to show her I could be as irrelevant as herself.
"She told me to come out to-night; she has told
me very often," said Miss Tina. "It is I who wouldn't
come. I don't like to leave her."
"Is she too weak, is she really failing?" I de-
manded, with more emotion, I think, than I meant to
betray. I measured this by the way her eyes rested
on me in the darkness. It embarrassed me a little,
and to turn the matter off I continued genially: "Do
let us sit down together comfortably somewhere —while you tell me all about her."
Miss Tina made no resistance to this. We found
a bench less secluded, less confidential, as it were,
than the one in the arbour; and we were still sitting
there when I heard midnight ring out from those
clear bells of Venice which vibrate with a solemnity
of their own over the lagoon and hold the air so much
more than the chimes of other places. We were to56


THE ASPERN PAPERS
gether more than an hour, and our interview gave,
as it struck me, a great lift to my undertaking. Miss
Tina accepted the situation without a protest; she
had avoided me for three months, yet now she treated
me almost as if these three months had made me an
old friend. If I had chosen I might have gathered
from this that though she had avoided me she had
given a good deal of consideration to doing so. She
paid no attention to the flight of time — never wor-
ried at my keeping her so long away from her aunt.
She talked freely, answering questions and asking
them and not even taking advantage of certain long-
ish pauses by which they were naturally broken to say
she thought she had better go in. It was almost as
if she were waiting for something — something I
might say to her — and intended to give me my
opportunity. I was the more struck by this as she
told me how much less well her aunt had been for a
good many days, and in a way that was rather new.
She was markedly weaker; at moments she showed
no strength at all; yet more than ever before she
wished to be left alone. That was why she had told
her to come out — not even to remain in her own
room, which was alongside; she pronounced poor
Miss Tina "a worry, a bore and a source of aggrava-
tion." She sat still for hours together, as if for long
sleep; she had always done that, musing and dozing;
but at such times formerly she gave, in breaks, some
small sign of life, of interest, liking her companion
to be near her with her work. This sad personage
confided to me that at present her aunt was so mo-
tionless as to create the fear she was dead; moreover 57


THE ASPERN PAPERS
she scarce ate or drank — one couldn't see what she
lived on. The great thing was that she still on most
days got up; the serious job was to dress her, to wheel
her out of her bedroom. She clung to as many of
her old habits as possible and had always, little com-
pany as they had received for years, made a point
of sitting in the great parlour.
I scarce knew what to think of all this — of Miss
Tina's sudden conversion to sociability and of the
strange fact that the more the old woman appeared to
decline to her end the less she should desire to be
looked after. The story hung indifferently together,
and I even asked myself if it mightn't be a trap laid
for me, the result of a design to make me show my
hand. I couldn't have told why my companions (as
they could only by courtesy be called) should have
this purpose — why they should try to trip up so
lucrative a lodger. But at any hazard I kept on my
guard, so that Miss Tina shouldn't have occasion
again to ask me what I might really be "up to." Poor
woman, before we parted for the night my mind was
at rest as to what she might be. She was up to no-
thing at all.
She told me more about their affairs than I had
hoped; there was no need to be prying, for it evidently
drew her out simply to feel me listen and care. She
ceased wondering why I should, and at last, while
describing the brilliant life they had led years before,
she almost chattered. It was Miss Tina who judged
it brilliant; she said that when they first came to live
in Venice, years and years back — I found her es-
sentially vague about dates and the order in which 58


THE ASPERN PAPERS
events had occurred — there was never a week they
hadn't some visitor or didn't make some pleasant
passeggio in the town. They had seen all the curios-
ities; they had even been to the Lido in a boat — she
spoke as if I might think there was a way on foot;
they had had a collation there, brought in three
baskets and spread out on the grass. I asked her
what people they had known and she said Oh very
nice ones — the Cavaliere Bombicci and the Con-
tessa Altemura, with whom they had had a great
friendship! Also English people — the Churtons
and the Goldies and Mrs. Stock-Stock, whom they
had loved dearly; she was dead and gone, poor dear.
That was the case with most of their kind circle —
this expression was Miss Tina's own; though a few
were left, which was a wonder considering how they
had neglected them. She mentioned the names of
two or three Venetian old women; of a certain doctor,
very clever, who was so attentive — he came as a
friend, he had really given up practice; of the awo-
cato Pochintesta, who wrote beautiful poems and had
addressed one to her aunt. These people came to see
them without fail every year, usually at the capo
a"anno, and of old her aunt used to make them some
little present — her aunt and she together: small
things that she, Miss Tina, turned out with her own
hand, paper lamp-shades, or mats for the decanters
of wine at dinner, or those woollen things that in
cold weather are worn on the wrists. The last few
years there hadn't been many presents; she couldn't
think what to make and her aunt had lost interest
and never suggested. But the people came all the 59


THE AS PERN PAPERS
same; if the good Venetians liked you once they liked
you for ever.
There was affecting matter enough in the good
faith of this sketch of former social glories; the picnic
at the Lido had remained vivid through the ages and
poor Miss Tina evidently was of the impression that
she had had a dashing youth. She had in fact had
a glimpse of the Venetian world in its gossiping
home-keeping parsimonious professional walks; for
I noted for the first time how nearly she had acquired
by contact the trick of the familiar soft-sounding
almost infantile prattle of the place. I judged her to
have imbibed this invertebrate dialect from the
natural way the names of things and people —
mostly purely local — rose to her lips. If she knew
little of what they represented she knew still less of
anything else. Her aunt had drawn in — the failure
of interest in the table-mats and lamp-shades was a
sign of that —and she hadn't been able to mingle
in society or to entertain it alone; so that her range
of reminiscence struck one as an old world altogether.
Her tone, hadn't it been so decent, would have
seemed to carry one back to the queer rococo Venice
of Goldoni and Casanova. I found myself mistakenly
think of her too as one of Jeffrey Aspern's contem-
poraries; this came from her having so little in com-
mon with my own. It was possible, I indeed rea-
soned, that she hadn't even heard of him; it might
very well be that Juliana had forborne to lift for
innocent eyes the veil that covered the temple of her
glory. In this case she perhaps wouldn't know of
the existence of the papers, and I welcomed that 60


THE AS PERN PAPERS
presumption — it made me feel more safe with her
—till I remembered we had believed the letter of
disavowal received by Cumnor to be in the hand-
writing of the niece. If it had been dictated to her
she had of course to know what it was about; though
the effect of it withal was to repudiate the idea of
any connexion with the poet. I held it probable at
all events that Miss Tina hadn't read a word of his
poetry. Moreover if, with her companion, she had
always escaped invasion and research, there was little
occasion for her having got it into her head that
people were "after" the letters. People had not
been after them, for people hadn't heard of them.
Cumnor's fruitless feeler would have been a solitary
accident.
When midnight sounded Miss Tina got up; but
she stopped at the door of the house only after she
had wandered two or three times with me round the
garden. "When shall I see you again?" I asked
before she went in; to which she replied with prompt-
ness that she should like to come out the next night.
She added however that she shouldn't come — she
was so far from doing everything she liked.
"You might do a few things / like," I quite sin-
cerely sighed.
"Oh you — I don't believe you!" she murmured
at this, facing me with her simple solemnity.
"Why don't you believe me?"
"Because I don't understand you."
"That's just the sort of occasion to have faith."
I couldn't say more, though I should have liked to,
as I saw I only mystified her; for I had no wish to 61


THE ASPERN PAPERS
have it on my conscience that I might pass for having
made love to her. Nothing less should I have seemed
to do had I continued to beg a lady to "believe in me"
in an Italian garden on a midsummer night. There
was some merit in my scruples, for Miss Tina ling-
ered and lingered: I made out in her the conviction
that she shouldn't really soon come down again and
the wish therefore to protract the present. She in-
sisted too on making the talk between us personal to
ourselves; and altogether her behaviour was such as
would have been possible only to a perfectly artless
and a considerably witless woman.
"I shall like the flowers better now that I know
them also meant for me."
"How could you have doubted it? If you '11 tell
me the kind you like best I '11 send a double lot."
"Oh I like them all best!" Then she went on
familiarly: "Shall you study — shall you read and
write — when you go up to your rooms?"
"I don't do that at night — at this season. The
lamplight brings in the animals."
"You might have known that when you came."
"I did know it!"
"And in winter do you work at night?"
"I read a good deal, but I don't often write." She
listened as if these details had a rare interest, and sud-
denly a temptation quite at odds with all the prudence
I had been teaching myself glimmered at me in her
plain mild face. Ah yes, she was safe and I could make
her safer! It seemed to me from one moment to an-
other that I couldn't wait longer — that I really must
take a sounding. So I went on: "In general before I 62


THE ASPERN PAPERS
go to sleep (very often in bed; it's a bad habit, but
I confess to it) I read some great poet. In nine cases
out of ten it's a volume of Jeffrey Aspern."
I watched her well as I pronounced that name,
but I saw nothing wonderful. Why should I indeed?
Wasn't Jeffrey Aspern the property of the human
race?
"Oh we read him — we have read him," she
quietly replied.
"He's my poet of poets — I know him almost by
heart."
For an instant Miss Tina hesitated; then her
sociability was too much for her. "Oh by heart —
that's nothing;" and, though dimly, she quite lighted.
"My aunt used to know him, to know him" — she
paused an instant and I wondered what she was going
to say —"to know him as a visitor."
"As a visitor?" I guarded my tone.
"He used to call on her and take her out."
I continued to stare. "My dear lady, he died a hun-
dred years ago!"
"Well," she said amusingly, "my aunt's a hundred
and fifty."
"Mercy on us!" I cried; "why didn't you tell me
before? I should like so to ask her about him."
"She would n't care for that — she would n't tell
you," Miss Tina returned.
"I don't care what she cares for! She must tell me
— it's not a chance to be lost."
"Oh you should have come twenty years ago. Then
she still talked about him."
"And what did she say?" I eagerly asked.63


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"I don't know — that he liked her immensely."
"And she —did n't she like him?"
"She said he was a god." Miss Tina gave me this
information flatly, without expression; her tone might
have made it a piece of trivial gossip. But it stirred
me deeply as she dropped the words into the summer
night; their sound might have been the light rustle of
an old unfolded love-letter.
"Fancy, fancy!" I murmured. And then: "Tell
me this, please — has she got a portrait of him?
They're distressingly rare."
"A portrait? I don't know," said Miss Tina; and
now there was discomfiture in her face. "Well, good-
night!" she added; and she turned into the house.
I accompanied her into the wide dusky stone-paved
passage that corresponded on the ground floor with
our great sala. It opened at one end into the garden,
at the other upon the canal, and was lighted now only
by the small lamp always left for me to take up as I
went to bed. An extinguished candle which Miss Tina
apparently had brought down with her stood on the
same table with it. "Good-night, good-night!" I
replied, keeping beside her as she went to get her light.
"Surely you'd know, shouldn't you, if she had one?"
"If she had what ?" the poor lady asked, looking at
me queerly over the flame of her candle.
"A portrait of the god. I don't know what I
wouldn't give to see it."
"I don't know what she has got. She keeps her
things locked up." And Miss Tina went away toward
the staircase with the sense evidently of having said
too much.
64


THE ASPERN PAPERS
I let her go — I wished not to frighten her — and I
contented myself with remarking that Miss Border-
eau wouldn't have locked up such a glorious posses-
sion as that: a thing a person would be proud of and
hang up in a prominent place on the parlour-wall.
Therefore of course she hadn't any portrait. Miss
Tina made no direct answer to this and, candle in
hand, with her back to me, mounted two or three
degrees. Then she stopped short and turned round,
looking at me across the dusky space.
"Do you write — do you write?" There was a
shake in her voice — she could scarcely bring it out.
"Do I write? Oh don't speak of my writing on the
same day with Aspern's!"
"Do you write about him — do you pry into his
life?"
"Ah that's your aunt's question; it can't be
yours!" I said in a tone of slightly wounded sensibil-
ity.
"All the more reason then that you should answer
it. Do you, please?"
I thought I had allowed for the falsehoods I should
have to tell, but I found that in fact when it came to
the point I hadn't. Besides, now that I had an open-
ing there was a kind of relief in being frank. Lastly —
it was perhaps fanciful, even fatuous — I guessed that
Miss Tina personally wouldn't in the last resort be
less my friend. So after a moment's hesitation I an-
swered : "Yes, I've written about him and I'm look-
ing for more material. In heaven's name have you got
any?"
"Santo Dio!" she exclaimed without heeding my 65


THE ASPERN PAPERS
question; and she hurried upstairs and out of sight.
I might count upon her in the last resort, but for the
present she was visibly alarmed. The proof of it was
that she began to hide again, so that for a fortnight I
kept missing her. I found my patience ebbing and
after four or five days of this I told the gardener to stop
the "floral tributes."


VI
One afternoon, at last, however, as I came down from
my quarters to go out, I found her in the sala: it was
our first encounter on that ground since I had come to
the house. She put on no air of being there by acci-
dent; there was an ignorance of such arts in her honest
angular diffidence. That I might be quite sure she
was waiting for me she mentioned it at once, but tell-
ing me with it that Miss Bordereau wished to see me:
she would take me into the room at that moment if I
had time. If I had been late for a love-tryst I would
have stayed for this, and I quickly signified that I
should be delighted to wait on my benefactress.
"She wants to talk with you — to know you," Miss
Tina said, smiling as if she herself appreciated that
idea; and she led me to the door of her aunt's apart-
ment. I stopped her a moment before she had opened
it, looking at her with some curiosity. I told her that
this was a great satisfaction to me and a great honour;
but all the same I should like to ask what had made
Miss Bordereau so markedly and suddenly change.
It had been only the other day that she wouldn't
suffer me near her. Miss Tina was not embarrassed
by my question; she had as many little unexpected
serenities, plausibilities almost, as if she told fibs, but
the odd part of them was that they had on the con-
trary their source in her truthfulness. "Oh my aunt
varies," she answered; "it's so terribly dull — I sup-
pose she's tired."
67


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"But you told me she wanted more and more to be
alone."
Poor Miss Tina coloured as if she found me too
pushing. "Well, if you don't believe she wants to see
you, I haven't invented it! I think people often are
capricious when they're very old."
"That's perfectly true. I only wanted to be clear
as to whether you've repeated to her what I told you
the other night."
"What you told me?"
"About Jeffrey Aspern — that I'm looking for
materials."
"If I had told her do you think she'd have sent for
you?"
"That's exactly what I want to know. If she wants
to keep him to herself she might have sent for me to
tell me so."
"She won't speak of him," said Miss Tina. Then
as she opened the door she added in a lower tone: "I
told her nothing."
The old woman was sitting in the same place in
which I had seen her last, in the same position, with
the same mystifying bandage over her eyes. Her wel-
come was to turn her almost invisible face to me and
show me that while she sat silent she saw me clearly.
I made no motion to shake hands with her; I now felt
too well that this was out of place for ever. It had
been sufficiently enjoined on me that she was too
sacred for trivial modernisms — too venerable to
touch. There was something so grim in her aspect—
it was partly the accident of her green shade — as I
stood there to be measured, that I ceased on the spot 68


THE ASPERN PAPERS
to doubt her suspecting me, though I didn't in the
least myself suspect that Miss Tina hadn't just spoken
the truth. She hadn't betrayed me, but the old
woman's brooding instinct had served her; she had
turned me over and over in the long still hours and had
guessed. The worst of it was that she looked terribly
like an old woman who at a pinch would, even like
Sardanapalus, burn her treasure. Miss Tina pushed
a chair forward, saying to me "This will be a good
place for you to sit." As I took possession of it I asked
after Miss Bordereau's health; expressed the hope that
in spite of the very hot weather it was satisfactory.
She answered that it was good enough—good enough;
that it was a great thing to be alive.
"Oh as to that, it depends upon what you com-
pare it with!" I returned with a laugh.
"I don't compare — I don't compare. If I did
that I should have given everything up long ago."
I liked to take this for a subtle allusion to the
rapture she had known in the society of Jeffrey Aspern
—though it was true that such an allusion would have
accorded ill with the wish I imputed to her to keep
him buried in her soul. What it accorded with was
my constant conviction that no human being had
ever had a happier social gift than his, and what it
seemed to convey was that nothing in the world was
worth speaking of if one pretended to speak of that.
But one didn't pretend! Miss Tina sat down beside
her aunt, looking as if she had reason to believe some
wonderful talk would come off between us.
"It's about the beautiful flowers," said the old
lady; "you sent us so many — I ought to have 69


THE ASPERN PAPERS
thanked you for them before. But I don't write
letters and I receive company but at long intervals."
She hadn't thanked me while the flowers con-
tinued to come, but she departed from her custom
so far as to send for me as soon as she began to fear
they would n't come any more. I noted this; I re-
membered what an acquisitive propensity she had
shown when it was a question of extracting gold from
me, and I privately rejoiced at the happy thought I
had had in suspending my tribute. She had missed
it and was willing to make a concession to bring it
back. At the first sign of this concession I could only
go to meet her. "I'm afraid you haven't had many,
of late, but they shall begin again immediately —■
to-morrow, to-night."
"Oh do send us some to-night!" Miss Tina cried
as if it were a great affair.
"What else should you do with them? It isn't a
manly taste to make a bower of your room," the old
woman remarked.
"I don't make a bower of my room, but I'm ex-
ceedingly fond of growing flowers, of watching their
ways. There's nothing unmanly in that; it has been
the amusement of philosophers, of statesmen in re-
tirement; even I think of great captains."
"I suppose you know you can sell them — those
you don't use," Miss Bordereau went on. "I dare say .
they wouldn't give you much for them; still, you
could make a bargain."
"Oh I've never in my life made a bargain, as you
ought pretty well to have gathered. My gardener
disposes of them and I ask no questions."
70


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"I'd ask a few, I can promise you!" said Miss
Bordereau; and it was so I first heard the strange
sound of her laugh, which was as if the faint "walk-
ing" ghost of her old-time tone had suddenly cut a
caper. I couldn't get used to the idea that this vision
of pecuniary profit was most what drew out the divine
Juliana.
"Come into the garden yourself and pick them;
come as often as you like; come every day. The
flowers are all for you," I pursued, addressing Miss
Tina and carrying off this veracious statement by
treating it as an innocent joke. "I can't imagine
why she doesn't come down," I added for Miss
Bordereau's benefit.
"You must make her come; you must come up
and fetch her," the old woman said to my stupefac-
tion. "That odd thing you've made in the corner
will do very well for her to sit in."
The allusion to the most elaborate of my shady
coverts, a sketchy "summer-house," was irreverent;
it confirmed the impression I had already received
that there was a flicker of impertinence in Miss Bor-
dereau's talk, a vague echo of the boldness or the
archness of her adventurous youth and which had
somehow automatically outlived passions and facul-
ties. None the less I asked: "Wouldn't it be possible
for you to come down there yourself? Wouldn't it
do you good to sit there in the shade and the sweet
air?"
"Oh sir, when I move out of this it won't be to
sit in the air, and I'm afraid that any that may be
stirring around me won't be particularly sweet! It 71


THE ASPERN PAPERS
will be a very dark shade indeed. But that won't be
just yet," Miss Bordereau continued cannily, as if to
correct any hopes this free glance at the last recep-
tacle of her mortality might lead me to entertain.
"I've sat here many a day and have had enough of
arbours in my time. But I'm not afraid to wait till
I'm called."
Miss Tina had expected, as I felt, rare conversa-
tion, but perhaps she found it less gracious on her
aunt's side — considering I had been sent for with a
civil intention — than she had hoped. As to give the
position a turn that would put our companion in a
light more favourable she said to me: "Didn't I tell
you the other night that she had sent me out? You
see I can do what I like!"
"Do you pity her — do you teach her to pity her-
self?" Miss Bordereau demanded, before I had time
to answer this appeal. "She has a much easier life
than I had at her age."
"You must remember it has been quite open to
me," I said, "to think you rather inhuman."
"Inhuman? That's what the poets used to call
the women a hundred years ago. Don't try that; you
won't do as well as they!" Juliana went on. "There's
no more poetry in the world — that / know of at
least. But I won't bandy words with you," she said,
and I well remember the old-fashioned artificial
sound she gave the speech. "You make me talk,
talk, talk! It isn't good for me at all." I got up at
this and told her I would take no more of her time;
but she detained me to put a question. "Do you re-
member, the day I saw you about the rooms, that you 72


THE ASPERN PAPERS
offered us the use of your gondola?" And when I
assented promptly, struck again with her disposition
to make a "good thing" of my being there and won-
dering what she now had in her eye, she produced:
"Why don't you take that girl out in it and show
her the place?"
"Oh dear aunt, what do you want to do with me?"
cried the "girl" with a piteous quaver. "I know all
about the place!"
"Well then go with him and explain!" said Miss
Bordereau, who gave an effect of cruelty to her im-
placable power of retort. This showed her as a sar-
castic profane cynical old woman. "Haven't we
heard that there have been all sorts of changes in all
these years? You ought to see them, and at your age
— I don't mean because you're so young — you
ought to take the chances that come. You're old
enough, my dear, and this gentleman won't hurt you.
He'll show you the famous sunsets, if they still go
on — do they go on? The sunset forme^^oloiigago.
But that's not a reason/DeTia^sTTsnall never miss
you; you think you're too important. Take her to
the Piazza; it used to be very pretty," Miss Bor-
dereau continued, addressing herself to me. "What
have they done with the funny old church? I hope
it hasn't tumbled down. Let her look at the shops;
she may take some money, she may buy what she
likes."
Poor Miss Tina had got up, discountenanced and
helpless, and as we stood there before her aunt it
would certainly have struck a spectator of the scene
that our venerable friend was making rare sport of 73


THE ASPERN PAPERS
us. Miss Tina protested in a confusion of exclama-
tions and murmurs; but I lost no time in saying that
if she would do me the honour to accept the hospi-
tality of my boat I would engage she really shouldn't
be bored. Or if she didn't want so much of my com-
pany the boat itself, with the gondolier, was at her
service; he was a capital oar and she might have
every confidence. Miss Tina, without definitely
answering this speech, looked away from me and
out of the window, quite as if about to weep, and I
remarked that once we had Miss Bordereau's ap-
proval we could easily come to an understanding.
We would take an hour, whichever she liked, one of
the very next days. As I made my obeisance to the
old lady I asked her if she would kindly permit me
to see her again.
For a moment she kept me; then she said: "Is it
very necessary to your happiness?"
"It diverts me more than I can say."
"You're wonderfully civil. Don't you know it
almost kills me?"
"How can I believe that when I see you more
animated, more brilliant than when I came in f"
"That's very true, aunt," said Miss Tina. "I
think it does you good."
"Isn't it touching, the solicitude we each have
that the other shall enjoy herself?" sneered Miss
Bordereau. "If you think me brilliant to-day you
don't know what you 're talking about; you've never
seen an agreeable woman. What do you people know
about good society?" she cried; but before I could
tell her, "Don't try to pay me a compliment; I've 74


THE ASPERN PAPERS
been spoiled," she went on. "My door's shut, but
you may sometimes knock."
With this she dismissed me and I left the room.
The latch closed behind me, but Miss Tina, contrary
to my hope, had remained within. I passed slowly
across the hall and before taking my way downstairs
waited a little. My hope was answered; after a minute
my conductress followed me. "That's a delightful
idea about the Piazza," I said. "When will you go
■— to-night, to-morrow?"
She had been disconcerted, as I have mentioned,
but I had already perceived, and I was to observe
again, that when Miss Tina was embarrassed she
did n't — as most women would have in like case—
turn away, floundering and hedging, but came closer,
as it were, with a deprecating, a clinging appeal to be
spared, to be protected. Her attitude was a constant
prayer for aid and explanation, and yet no woman in
the world could have been less of a comedian. From
the moment you were kind to her she depended on
you absolutely; her self-consciousness dropped and
she took the greatest intimacy, the innocent intimacy
that was all she could conceive, for granted. She
didn't know, she now declared, what possessed her
aunt, who had changed so quickly, who had got some
idea. I replied that she must catch the idea and let
me have it: we would go and take an ice together at
Florian's and she should report while we listened to
the band.
"Oh it will take me a long time to be able to
'report'!" she said rather ruefully; and she could
promise me this satisfaction neither for that night nor
75


THE ASPERN PAPERS
for the next. I was patient now, however, for I felt I
had only to wait; and in fact at the end of the week,
one lovely evening after dinner, she stepped into my
gondola, to which in honour of the occasion I had
attached a second oar.
We swept in the course of five minutes into the
Grand Canal; whereupon she uttered a murmur of
ecstasy as fresh as if she had been a tourist just
arrived. She had forgotten the splendour of the great
water-way on a clear summer evening, and how the
sense of floating between marble palaces and reflected
lights disposed the mind to freedom and ease. We
floated long and far, and though my friend gave no
high-pitched voice to her glee I was sure of her full
surrender. She was more than pleased, she was trans-
ported; the whole thing was an immense liberation.
The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time
to enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars,
which grew louder and more musically liquid as we
passed into narrow canals, as if it were a revelation of
Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she
had thus floated she answered: "Oh I don't know; a
long time — not since my aunt began to be ill." This
was not the only show of her extreme vagueness about
the previous years and the line marking ofF the period
of Miss Bordereau's eminence. I was not at liberty
to keep her out long, but we took a considerable giro
before going to the Piazza. I asked her no questions,
holding off by design from her life at home and the
things I wanted to know; I poured, rather, treasures
of information about the objects before and around us
into her ears, describing also Florence and Rome, dis-
76


THE ASPERN PAPERS
coursing on the charms and advantages of travel. She
reclined, receptive, on the deep leather cushions,
turned her eyes conscientiously to everything I noted
and never mentioned to me till some time afterwards
that she might be supposed to know Florence better
than I, as she had lived there for years with her kins-
woman. At last she said with the shy impatience of a
child: "Are we not really going to the Piazza? That's
what I want to see!" I immediately gave the order
that we should go straight, after which we sat silent
with the expectation of arrival. As some time still
passed, however, she broke out of her own move-
ment: "I've found out what's the matter with my
aunt: she's afraid you'll go!"
I quite gasped. "What has put that into her
head?"
"She has had an idea you've not been happy.
That's why she's different now."
"You mean she wants to make me happier?"
"Well, she wants you not to go. She wants you to
stay."
"I suppose you mean on account of the rent," I
remarked candidly.
Miss Tina's candour but profited. "Yes, you know; so that I shall have more."
"How much does she want you to have?" I asked with all the gaiety I now felt. "She ought to fix the
sum, so that I may stay till it's made up."
"Oh that wouldn't please me," said Miss Tina.
"It would be unheard of, your taking that trouble."
"But suppose I should have my own reasons for
staying in Venice?"
77


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Then it would be better for you to stay in some
other house."
"And what would your aunt say to that?"
"She wouldn't like it at all. But I should think
you'd do well to give up your reasons and go away
altogether."
"Dear Miss Tina," I said, "it's not so easy to give
up my reasons!"
She made no immediate answer to this, but after a
moment broke out afresh: "I think I know what your
reasons are!"
"I daresay, because the other night I almost told
you how I wished you'd help me to make them good."
"I can't do that without being false to my aunt."
"What do you mean by being false to her?"
"Why she would never consent to what you want.
She has been asked, she has been written to. It makes
her fearfully angry."
"Then she has papers of value?" I precipitately
cried.
"Oh she has everything!" sighed Miss Tina with a curious wearinessTa sudden lapse into gloom.
These words caused all my pulses to throb, for I
regarded them as precious evidence. I felt them too
deeply to speak, and in the interval the gondola ap-
proached the Piazzetta. After we had disembarked I
asked my companion if she would rather walk round
the square or go and sit before the great cafe; to which
she replied that she would do whichever I liked best
— I must only remember again how little time she
had. I assured her there was plenty to do both, and
we made the circuit of the long arcades. Her spirits 78


THE ASPERN PAPERS
revived at the sight of the bright shop-windows, and
she lingered and stopped, admiring or disapproving
of their contents, asking me what I thought of things,
theorising about prices. My attention wandered from
her; her words of a while before "Oh she has every-
thing!" echoed so in my consciousness. We sat down
at last in the crowded circle at Florian's, finding an
unoccupied table among those that were ranged in the
square. It was a splendid night and all the world
out-of-doors; Miss Tina couldn't have wished the
elements more auspicious for her return to society. I
saw she felt it all even more than she told, but her
impressions were well-nigh too many for her. She had
forgotten the attraction of the world and was learning
that she had for the best years of her life been rather
mercilessly cheated of it. This didn't make her
angry; but as she took in the charming scene her face
had, in spite of its smile of appreciation, the flush of a
wounded surprise. She didn't speak, sunk in the sense
of opportunities, for ever lost, that ought to have been
easy; and this gave me a chance to say to her: "Did
you mean a while ago that your aunt has a plan of
keeping me on by admitting me occasionally to her
presence?"
"She thinks it will make a difference with you if
you sometimes see her. She wants you so much to
stay that she's willing to make that concession."
"And what good does she consider I think it will
do me to see her f"
"I don't know; it must be interesting," said
Miss Tina simply. "You told her you found it so."
"So I did; but every one doesn't think that."
79


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"No, of course not, or more people would try."
"Well, if she's capable of making that reflexion
she's capable also of making this further one," I went
on: "that I must have a particular reason for not
doing as others do, in spite of the interest she offers —
for not leaving her alone." Miss Tina looked as if she
failed to grasp this rather complicated proposition; so
I continued: "If you've not told her what I said to
you the other night may she not at least have guessed
it?"
"I don't know — she's very suspicious."
"But she hasn't been made so by indiscreet curi-
osity, by persecution?"
"No, no; it isn't that," said Miss Tina, turning on
me a troubled face. "I don't know how to say it: it's
on account of something — ages ago, before I was
born — in her life."
"Something? What sort of thing ?" — and I asked
it as if I could have no idea.
"Oh she has never told me." And I was sure my
friend spoke the truth.
Her extreme limpidity was almost provoking, and
I felt for the moment that she would have been more
satisfactory if she had been less ingenuous. "Do you
suppose it's something to which Jeffrey Aspern's
letters and papers — I mean the things in her posses-
sion — have reference?"
"I daresay it is!" my companion exclaimed as if
this were a very happy suggestion. "I've never looked
at any of those things."
"None of them? Then how do you know what they
are?"
So


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"I don't/' said Miss Tina placidly. "I've never
had them in my hands. But I've seen them when she
has had them out."
"Does she have them out often?""Not now, but she used to. She's very fond of
them."
"In spite of their being compromising?""Compromising?" Miss Tina repeated as if vague
as to what that meant. I felt almost as one who cor-
rupts the innocence of youth.
"I allude to their containing painful memories." "Oh I don't think anything's painful.' "You mean there's nothing to affect her reputa-
tion?"
An odder look even than usual came at this into
the face of Miss Bordereau's niece — a confession, it
seemed, of helplessness, an appeal to me to deal fairly,
generously with her. I had brought her to the Piazza,
placed her among charming influences, paid her an
attention she appreciated, and now I appeared to show
it all as a bribe — a bribe to make her turn in some
way against her aunt. She was of a yielding nature and
capable of doing almost anything to please a person
markedly kind to her; but the greatest kindness of all
would be not to presume too much on this. It was
strange enough, as I afterwards thought, that she had
not the least air of resenting my want of consideration
for her aunt's character, which would have been in the
worst possible taste if anything less vital —from my
point of view — had been at stake. I don't think she
really measured it. "Do you mean she ever did some-
thing bad ?" she asked in a moment.


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Heaven forbid I should say so, and it's none of
my business. Besides, if she did," I agreeably put it,
"that was in other ages, in another world. But why
shouldn't she destroy her papers?"
"Oh she loves them too much."
"Even now, when she may be near her end?"
"Perhaps when she's sure of that she will."
"Well, Miss Tina," I said, "that's just what I
should like you to prevent."
"How can I prevent it?"
"Couldn't you get them away from her?"
"And give them to you?"
This put the case, superficially, with sharp irony,
but I was sure of her not intending that. "Oh I mean
that you might let me see them and look them over.
It isn't for myself, or that I should want them at any
cost to anyone else. It's simply that they would be of
such immense interest to the public, such immeasur-
able importance as a contribution to Jeffrey Aspern's
history."
She listened to me in her usual way, as if I abounded
in matters she had never heard of, and I felt almost as
base as the reporter of a newspaper who forces his way
into a house of mourning. This was marked when she
presently said: "There was a gentleman who some
time ago wrote to her in very much those words. He
also wanted her papers."
"And did she answer him?" I asked, rather
ashamed of not having my friend's rectitude.
"Only when he had written two or three times. He
made her very angry." "And what did she say?"82


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"She said he was a devil," Miss Tina replied cate-
gorically.
"She used that expression in her letter?""Oh no; she said it to me. She made me write to
him."
"And what did you say?"
"I told him there were no papers at all."
"Ah poor gentleman!" I groaned.
"I knew there were, but I wrote what she bade me."
"Of course you had to do that. But I hope I shan't
pass for a devil."
"It will depend upon what you ask me to do for
you," my companion smiled.
"Oh if there's a chance of your thinking so my
affair's in a bad way! I shan't ask you to steal for
me, nor even to fib — for you can't fib, unless on
paper. But the principal thing is this — to prevent
her destroying the papers."
"Why I've no control of her," said Miss Tina.
"It's she who controls me."
"But she doesn't control her own arms and legs,
does she? The way she would naturally destroy her
letters would be to burn them. Now she can't burn
them without fire, and she can't get fire unless you
give it her."
"I've always done everything she has asked," my
poor friend pleaded. "Besides, there's Olimpia."
I was on the point of saying that Olimpia was prob-
ably corruptible, but I thought it best not to sound
that note. So I simply put it that this frail creature
might perhaps be managed.
"Every one can be managed by my aunt," said 83


THE ASPERN PAPERS
Miss Tina. And then she remembered that her holi-
day was over; she must go home.
I laid my hand on her arm, across the table, to stay
her a moment. "What I want of you is a general
promise to help me."
"Oh how can I, how can I ?" she asked, wondering
and troubled. She was half-surprised, half-frightened
at my attaching that importance to her, at my calling
on her for action.
"This is the main thing: to watch our friend care-
fully and warn me in time, before she commits that
dreadful sacrilege."
"I can't watch her when she makes me go out."
"That's very true."
"And when you do too."
"Mercy on us — do you think she '11 have done
anything to-night?"
"I don't know. She's very cunning."
"Are you trying to frighten me?" I asked.
I felt this question sufficiently answered when
my companion murmured in a musing, almost en-
vious way: "Oh but she loves them — she loves
them!"
This reflexion, repeated with such emphasis, gave
me great comfort; but to obtain more of that balm I
said: "If she shouldn't intend to destroy the objects
we speak of before her death she '11 probably have
made some disposition by will."
"By will?"
"Hasn't she made a will for your benefit?""Ah she has so little to leave. That's why she likes
money," said Miss Tina.
84


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Might I ask, since»we're really talking things
over, what you and she live on?"
"On some money that comes from America, from a
gentleman — I think a lawyer — in New York. He
sends it every quarter. It isn't much!"
"And won't she have disposed of that?"
My companion hesitated — I saw she was blushing.
"I believe it's mine," she said; and the look and tone
which accompanied these words betrayed so the
absence of the habit of thinking of herself that I
almost thought her charming. The next instant she
added: "But she had in an awocato here once, ever so
long ago. And some people came and signed some-
thing."
"They were probably witnesses. And you weren't
asked to sign? Well then," I argued, rapidly and
hopefully, "it's because you're the legatee. She
must have left all her documents to you!"
"If she has it's with very strict conditions," Miss
Tina responded, rising quickly, while the movement
gave the words a small character of decision. They
seemed to imply that the bequest would be accom-
panied with a proviso that the articles bequeathed
should remain concealed from every inquisitive eye,
and that I was very much mistaken if I thought her
the person to depart from an injunction so absolute.
"Oh of course you '11 have to abide by the terms,"
I said; and she uttered nothing to mitigate the rigour
of this conclusion. None the less, later on, just before
we disembarked at her own door after a return which
had taken place almost in silence, she said to me
abruptly: "I'll do what I can to help you." I was 85


THE ASPERN PAPERS
grateful for this — it was very well so far as it went;
but it didn't keep me from remembering that night in
a worried waking hour that I now had her word for it
to re-enforce my own impression that the old woman
was full of craft.


VII
The fear of what this side of her character might have
led her to do made me nervous for days afterwards.
I waited for an intimation from Miss Tina; I almost
read it as her duty to keep me informed, to let me
know definitely whether or no Miss Bordereau had
sacrificed her treasures. But as she gave no sign I lost
patience and determined to put the case to the very
touch of my own senses. I sent late one afternoon to
ask if I might pay the ladies a visit, and my servant
came back with surprising news. Miss Bordereau
could be approached without the least difficulty; she
had been moved out into the sala and was sitting by
the window that overlooked the garden. I descended
and found this picture correct; the old lady had been
wheeled forth into the world and had a certain air,
which came mainly perhaps from some brighter ele-
ment in her dress, of being prepared again to have
converse with it. It had not yet, however, begun to
flock about her; she was perfectly alone and, though
the door leading to her own quarters stood open, I had
at first no glimpse of Miss Tina. The window at
which she sat had the afternoon shade and, one of the
shutters having been pushed back, she could see the
pleasant garden, where the summer sun had by this
time dried up too many of the plants —she could see
the yellow light and the long shadows."Have you come to tell me you'll take the rooms
87


THE ASPERN PAPERS
for six months more ?" she asked as I approached her,
startling me by something coarse in her cupidity
almost as much as if she hadn't already given me a
specimen of it. Juliana's desire to make our acquaint-
ance lucrative had been, as I have sufficiently indi-
cated, a false note in my image of the woman who had
inspired a great poet with immortal lines; but I may
say here definitely that I after all recognised large
allowance to be made for her. It was I who had
kindled the unholy flame; it was I who had put into
her head that she had the means of making money.
She appeared never to have thought of that; she had
been living wastefully for years, in a house five times
too big for her, on a footing that I could explain only
by the presumption that, excessive as it was, the space
she enjoyed cost her next to nothing and that, small
as were her revenues, they left her, for Venice, an
appreciable margin. I had descended on her
one day and taught her to calculate, and my almost
extravagant comedy on the subject of the garden had presented me irresistibly in the light of a victim.
Like all persons who achieve the miracle of changing their point of view late in life, she had been intensely
converted: she had seized my hint with a desperate
tremulous clutch.
I invited myself to go and get one of the chairs that
stood, at a distance, against the wall — she had given
herself no concern as to whether I should sit or stand;
and while I placed it near her I began gaily:" Oh dear
madam, what an imagination you have, what an intel-
lectual sweep! I'm a poor devil of a man of letters
who lives from day to day. How can I take palaces 


THE ASPERN PAPERS
by the year? My existence is precarious. I don't
know whether six months hence I shall have bread to
put in my mouth. I've treated myself for once; it has
been an immense luxury. But when it comes to going
on—!"
"Are your rooms too dear? if they are you can
have more for the same money," Juliana responded.
"We can arrange, we can combinare, as they say
here."
"Well yes, since you ask me, they're too dear,
much too dear," I said. "Evidently you suppose me
richer than I am."
She looked at me as from the mouth of her cave.
"If you write books don't you sell them?"
"Do you mean don't people buy them? A little,
a very little — not so much as I could wish. Writing
books, unless one be a great genius — and even then!
—is the last road to fortune. I think there's no more
money to be made by good letters."
"Perhaps you don't choose nice subjects. What
do you write about?" Miss Bordereau implacably
pursued.
"About the books of other people. I'm a critic,
a commentator, an historian, in a small way." I
wondered what she was coming to.
"And what other people now?"
"Oh better ones than myself: the great writers
mainly — the great philosophers and poets of the
past; those who are dead and gone and can't, poor
darlings, speak for themselves."
"And what do you say about them?"
"I say they sometimes attached themselves to very 89


THE ASPERN PAPERS
clever women!" I replied as for pleasantness. I had
measured, as I thought, my risk, but as my words
fell upon the air they were to strike me as imprudent.
However, I had launched them and I wasn't sorry,
for perhaps after all the old woman would be willing
to treat. It seemed tolerably obvious that she knew
my secret: why therefore drag the process out? But
she didn't take what I had said as a confession; she
only asked:
"Do you think it's right to rake up the past?"
"I don't feel that I know what you mean by raking
it up. How can we get at it unless we dig a little?
The present has such a rough way of treading it
down."
"Oh I like the past, but I don't like critics," my
hostess declared with her hard complacency."Neither do I, but I like their discoveries."
"Aren't they mostly lies?"
"The lies are what they sometimes discover," I
said, smiling at the quiet impertinence of this. "They
often lay bare the truth."
"The truth is God's, it isn't man's: we had better
leave it alone. Who can judge of it ?—who can say?"
"We're terribly in the dark, I know," I admitted;
"but if we give up trying what becomes of all the
fine things? What becomes of the work I just men-
tioned, that of the great philosophers and poets?
It's all vain words if there's nothing to measure it
"You talk as if you were a tailor," said Miss Bor-
dereau whimsically; and then she added quickly and
in a different manner: "This house is very fine; the 90


THE ASPERN PAPERS
proportions are magnificent. To-day I wanted to
look at this part again. I made them bring me out
here. When your man came just now to learn if I
would see you I was on the point of sending for you
to ask if you didn't mean to go on. I wanted to judge
what I'm letting you have. This sala is very grand,"
she pursued like an auctioneer, moving a little, as I
guessed, her invisible eyes. "I don't believe you often
have lived in such a house, eh?"
"I can't often afford to!" I said.
"Well then how much will you give me for six
months?"
I was on the point of exclaiming — and the air of
excruciation in my face would have denoted a moral
fact — " Don't, Juliana; for his sake, don't!" But
I controlled myself and asked less passionately:
"Why should I remain so long as that?"
"I thought you liked it," said Miss Bordereau with
her shrivelled dignity.
"So I thought I should."
For a moment she said nothing more, and I left
my own words to suggest to her what they might.
I half-expected her to say, coldly enough, that if I
had been disappointed we needn't continue the dis-
cussion, and this in spite of the fact that I believed
her now to have in her mind — however it had come
there — what would have told her that my disap-
pointment was natural. But to my extreme surprise
she ended by observing: "If you don't think we've
treated you well enough perhaps we can discover
some way of treating you better." This speech was
somehow so incongruous that it made me laugh again, 91


THE AS PERN PAPERS
and I excused myself by saying that she talked as if
I were a sulky boy pouting in the corner and having
to be "brought round." I hadn't a grain of com-
plaint to make; and could anything have exceeded
Miss Tina's graciousness in accompanying me a few
nights before to the Piazza? At this the old woman
went on: "Well, you brought it on yourself!" And
then in a different tone: "She's a very fine girl." I
assented cordially to this proposition, and she ex-
pressed the hope that I did so not merely to be
obliging, but that I really liked her. Meanwhile I
wondered still more what Miss Bordereau was com-
ing to. "Except for me, to-day," she said,"she has n't
a relation in the world." Did she by describing her
niece as amiable and unencumbered wish to repre-
sent her as a parti?
It was perfectly true that I couldn't afford to go
on with my rooms at a fancy price and that I had
already devoted to my undertaking almost all the
hard cash I had set apart for it. My patience and
my time were by no means exhausted, but I should
be able to draw upon them only on a more usual
Venetian basis. I was willing to pay the precious
personage with whom my pecuniary dealings were
such a discord twice as much as any other padrona
di casa would have asked, but I wasn't willing to
pay her twenty times as much. I told her so plainly,
and my plainness appeared to have some success,
for she exclaimed: "Very good; you've done what I
asked —you've made an offer!"
"Yes, but not for half a year. Only by the month."
."Oh I must think of that then." She seemed dis92


THE ASPERN PAPERS
appointed that I wouldn't tie myself to a period,
and I guessed that she wished both to secure me and
to discourage me; to say severely: "Do you dream
that you can get off with less than six months? Do
you dream that even by the end of that time you '11
be appreciably nearer your victory?" What was
most in my mind was that she had a fancy to play
me the trick of making me engage myself when in
fact she had sacrificed her treasure. There was a
moment when my suspense on this point was so acute
that I all but broke out with the question, and what
kept it back was but an instinctive recoil — lest it
should be a mistake — from the last violence of self-
exposure. She was such a subtle old witch that one
could never tell where one stood with her. You may
imagine whether it cleared up the puzzle when, just
after she had said she would think of my proposal
and without any formal transition, she drew out of
her pocket with an embarrassed hand a small object
wrapped in crumpled white paper. She held it there
a moment and then resumed: "Do you know much
about curiosities?""About curiosities?"
"About antiquities, the old gimcracks that people
pay so much for to-day. Do you know the kind of
price they bring?"
I thought I saw what was coming, but I said in-
genuously: "Do you want to buy something?"
"No, I want to sell. What would an amateur give
me for that?" She unfolded the white paper and
made a motion for me to take from her a small oval
portrait. I possessed myself of it with fingers of which 93


THE ASPERN PAPERS
I could only hope that they didn't betray the intens-
ity of their clutch, and she added: "I would part
with it only for a good price."
At the first glance I recognised Jeffrey Aspern,
and was well aware that I flushed with the act. As
she was watching me however I had the consistency
to exclaim: "What a striking face! Do tell me who
he is."
"He's an old friend of mine, a very distinguished
man in his day. He gave it me himself, but I'm
afraid to mention his name, lest you never should
have heard of him, critic and historian as you are.
I know the world goes fast and one generation forgets
another. He was all the fashion when I was young."
She was perhaps amazed at my assurance, but I
was surprised at hers; at her having the energy, in
her state of health and at her time of life, to wish to
sport with me to that tune simply for her private
entertainment — the humour to test me and practise
on me and befool me. This at least was the inter-
pretation that I put upon her production of the relic,
for I couldn't believe she really desired to sell it or
cared for any information I might give her. What
she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put
a prohibitive price on it. "The face comes back to
me, it torments me," I said, turning the object this
way and that and looking at it very critically. It was
a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than
the ordinary miniature and representing a young man
with a remarkably handsome face, in a high-collared
green coat and a buff waistcoat. I felt in the
little work a virtue of likeness and judged it to have 94


THE ASPERN PAPERS
been painted when the model was about twenty-five.
There are, as all the world knows, three other por-
traits of the poet in existence, but none of so early
a date as this elegant image. "I've never seen the
original, clearly a man of a past age, but I've seen
other reproductions of this face," I went on. "You
expressed doubt of this generation's having heard of
the gentleman, but he strikes me for all the world as
a celebrity. Now who is he? I can't put my finger
on him — I can't give him a label. Wasn't he a
writer? Surely he's a poet." I was determined that
it should be she, not I, who should first pronounce
Jeffrey Aspern's name.
My resolution was taken in ignorance of Miss
Bordereau's extremely resolute character, and her
lips never formed in my hearing the syllables that
meant so much for her. She neglected to answer my
question, but raised her hand to take back the pict-
ure, using a gesture which though impotent was
in a high degree peremptory. "It's only a person
who should know for himself that would give me my
price," she said with a certain dryness.
"Oh then you have a price?" I didn't restore
the charming thing; not from any vindictive purpose,
but because I instinctively clung to it. We looked at
each other hard while I retained it.
"I know the least I would take. What it occurred
to me to ask you about is the most I shall be able to
get."
She made a movement, drawing herself together
as if, in a spasm of dread at having lost her prize,
she had been impelled to the immense effort of rising 95


THE ASPERN PAPERS
to snatch it from me. I instantly placed it in her hand
again, saying as I did so: "I should like to have it
myself, but with your ideas it would be quite beyond
my mark."
She turned the small oval plate over in her lap,
with its face down, and I heard her catch her breath
as after a strain or an escape. This however did not
prevent her saying in a moment: "You'd buy a like-
ness of a person you don't know by an artist who has
no reputation?"
"The artist may have no reputation, but that
thing's wonderfully well painted," I replied, to give
myself a reason.
"It's lucky you thought of saying that, because
the painter was my father."
"That makes the picture indeed precious!" I re-
turned with gaiety; and I may add that a part of my
cheer came from this proof I had been right in my
theory of Miss Bordereau's origin. Aspern had of
course met the young lady on his going to her father's
studio as a sitter. I observed to Miss Bordereau that
if she would entrust me with her property for twenty-
four hours I should be happy to take advice on it;
but she made no other reply than to slip it in silence
into her pocket. This convinced me still more that
she had no sincere intention of selling it during her
lifetime, though she may have desired to satisfy her-
self as to the sum her niece, should she leave it to
her, might expect eventually to obtain for it. "Well,
at any rate, I hope you won't offer it without giving
me notice," I said as she remained irresponsive.
"Remember me as a possible purchaser."
96


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"I should want your money first!" she returned
with unexpected rudeness; and then, as if she be-
thought herself that I might well complain of such
a tone and wished to turn the matter off, asked ab-
ruptly what I talked about with her niece when I
went out with her that way of an evening.
"You speak as if we had set up the habit," I re-
plied. "Certainly I should be very glad if it were to
become our pleasant custom. But in that case I
should feel a still greater scruple at betraying a lady's
confidence."
"Her confidence? Has my niece confidence?"
"Here she is — she can tell you herself," I said;
for Miss Tina now appeared on the threshold of the
old woman's parlour. "Have you confidence, Miss
Tina? Your aunt wants very much to know."
"Not in her, not in her!" the younger lady de-
clared, shaking her head with a dolefulness that was
neither jocular nor affected. "I don't know what to
do with her; she has fits of horrid imprudence. She's
so easily tired — and yet she has begun to roam, to
drag herself about the house." And she looked down
at her yoke-fellow of long years with a vacancy of
wonder, as if all their contact and custom hadn't
made her perversities, on occasion, any more easy
to follow.
"I know what I'm about. I'm not losing my mind.
I daresay you'd like to think so," said Miss Bor-
dereau with a crudity of cynicism.
"I don't suppose you came out here yourself. Miss
Tina must have had to lend you a hand," I inter-
posed for conciliation.
97


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Oh she insisted we should push her; and when
she insists!" said Miss Tina, in the same tone of
apprehension: as if there were no knowing what
service she disapproved of her aunt might force her
next to render.
"I've always got most things done I wanted, thank
God! The people I've lived with have humoured
me," the old woman continued, speaking out of the
white ashes of her vanity.
I took it pleasantly up. "I suppose you mean
they've obeyed you."
"Well, whatever it is—when they like one." "It's just because I like you that I want to resist,"
said Miss Tina with a nervous laugh.
"Oh I suspect you'll bring Miss Bordereau up-
stairs next to pay me a visit," I went on; to which
the old lady replied:
"Oh no; I can keep an eye on you from here!"
"You're very tired; you'll certainly be ill to-
night!" cried Miss Tina.
"Nonsense, dear; I feel better at this moment
than I've done for a month. To-morrow I shall
come out again. I want to be where I can see this
clever gentleman."
"Shouldn't you perhaps see me better in your
sitting-room?" I asked.
"Don't you mean shouldn't you have a better
chance at me?" she returned, fixing me a moment
with her green shade.
"Ah I haven't that anywhere! I look at you but
don't see you."
"You agitate her dreadfully — and that's not 98


THE ASPERN PAPERS
good," said Miss Tina, giving me a reproachful de-
terrent headshake.
"I want to watch you — I want to watch you!"
Miss Bordereau went on.
"Well then let us spend as much of our time to-
gether as possible — I don't care where. That will
give you every facility."
"Oh I've seen you enough for to-day. I'm satis-
fied. Now I'll go home," Juliana said. Miss Tina
laid her hands on the back of the wheeled chair and
began to push, but I begged her to let me take her
place. "Oh yes, you may move me this way — you
shan't in any other!" the old woman cried as she
felt herself propelled firmly and easily over the
smooth hard floor. Before we reached the door of
her own apartment she bade me stop, and she took
a long last look up and down the noble sala. "Oh
it's a prodigious house!" she murmured; after
which I pushed her forward. When we had entered
the parlour Miss Tina let me know she should now
be able to manage, and at the same moment the little
red-haired donna came to meet her mistress. Miss
Tina's idea was evidently to get her aunt immediately
back to bed. I confess that in spite of this urgency
I was guilty of the indiscretion of lingering; it held
me there to feel myself so close to the objects I
coveted — which would be probably put away some-
where in the faded unsociable room. The place had
indeed a bareness that suggested no hidden values;
there were neither dusky nooks nor curtained corners,
neither massive cabinets nor chests with iron bands.
Moreover it was possible, it was perhaps even likely, 99


THE ASPERN PAPERS
that the old lady had consigned her relics to her bed-
room, to some battered box that was shoved under
the bed, to the drawer of some lame dressing-table,
where they would be in the range of vision by the dim
night-lamp. None the less I turned an eye on every
article of furniture, on every conceivable cover for a
hoard, and noticed that there were half a dozen things
with drawers, and in particular a tall old secretary
with brass ornaments of the style of the Empire — a
receptacle somewhat infirm but still capable of keep-
ing rare secrets. I don't know why this article so
engaged me, small purpose as I had of breaking into
it; but I stared at it so hard that Miss Tina noticed
me and changed colour. Her doing this made me
think I was right and that, wherever they might have
been before, the Aspern papers at that moment lan-
guished behind the peevish little lock of the secretary.
It was hard to turn my attention from the dull ma-
hogany front when I reflected that a plain panel
divided me from the goal of my hopes; but I gathered
up my slightly scattered prudence and with an effort took leave of my hostess. To make the effort graceful
I said to her that I should certainly bring her an
opinion about the little picture.
"The little picture?" Miss Tina asked in sur-
prise.
"What do you know about it, my dear?" the old
woman demanded. "You needn't mind. I've fixed
my price."
"And what may that be"
"A thousand pounds."
"Oh Lord!" cried poor Miss Tina irrepressibly.
ioo


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Is that what she talks to you about?" said Miss
Bordereau.
"Imagine your aunt's wanting to know!" I had
to separate from my younger friend with only those
words, though I should have liked immensely to
add: "For heaven's sake meet me to-night in the
garden I"


VIII
As it turned out the precaution had not been needed,
for three hours later, just as I had finished my dinner,
Miss Tina appeared, unannounced, in the open
doorway of the room in which my simple repasts
were served. I remember well that I felt no sur-
prise at seeing her; which is not a proof of my not
believing in her timidity. It was immense, but in
a case in which there was a particular reason for
boldness it never would have prevented her from
running up to my floor. I saw that she was now
quite full of a particular reason; it threw her forward
— made her seize me, as I rose to meet her, by the
arm.
"My aunt's very ill; I think she's dying!"
"Never in the world," I answered bitterly. "Don't
you be afraid!"
"Do go for a doctor — do, do! Olimpia's gone
for the one we always have, but she doesn't come
back; I don't know what has happened to her. I
told her that if he wasn't at home she was to follow
him where he had gone; but apparently she's follow-
ing him all over Venice. I don't know what to do—
she looks so as if she were sinking."
"May I see her, may I judge?" I asked. "Of
course I shall be delighted to bring some one; but
hadn't we better send my man instead, so that I may
stay with you?"
102


THE ASPERN PAPERS
Miss Tina assented to this and I dispatched my
servant for the best doctor in the neighbourhood. I
hurried downstairs with her, and on the way she told
me that an hour after I quitted them in the afternoon
Miss Bordereau had had an attack of "oppression,"
a terrible difficulty in breathing. This had subsided,
but had left her so exhausted that she didn't come
up; she seemed all spent and gone. I repeated that she
was n't gone, that she wouldn't go yet; whereupon
Miss Tina gave me a sharper sidelong glance than she
had ever favoured me withal and said: "Really, what
do you mean? I suppose you don't accuse her of
making-believe!" I forget what reply I made to this,
but I fear that in my heart I thought the old woman
capable of any weird manoeuvre. Miss Tina wanted
to know what I had done to her; her aunt had told
her I had made her so angry. I declared I had done
nothing whatever — I had been exceedingly careful;
to which my companion rejoined that our friend had
assured her she had had a scene with me — a scene
that had upset her. I answered with some resentment
that the scene had been of her making — that I
couldn't think what she was angry with me for unless
for not seeing my way to give a thousand pounds for
the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern. "And did she show
you that? Oh gracious —oh deary me!" groaned
Miss Tina, who seemed to feel the situation pass out
of her control and the elements of her fate thicken
round her. I answered her I'd give anything to pos-
sess it, yet that I had no thousand pounds; but I
stopped when we came to the door of Miss Bordereau's
room. I had an immense curiosity to pass it, but I 103


THE ASPERN PAPERS
thought it my duty to represent to Miss Tina that if I
made the invalid angry she ought perhaps to be spared
the sight of me. "The sight of you? Do you think she
can see?" my companion demanded almost with
indignation. I did think so but forbore to say it, and
I softly followed my conductress.
I remember that what I said to her as I stood for
a moment beside the old woman's bed was: "Does she
never show you her eyes then? Have you never seen
them?" Miss Bordereau had been divested of her
green shade, but — it was not my fortune to behold
Juliana in her nightcap — the upper half of her face
was covered by the fall of a piece of dingy lacelike
muslin, a sort of extemporised hood which, wound
round her head, descended to the end of her nose,
leaving nothing visible but her white withered cheeks
and puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were,
consciously. Miss Tina gave me a glance of surprise,
evidently not seeing a reason for my impatience.
"You mean she always wears something? She does
it to preserve them."
"Because they're so fine?"
"Oh to-day, to-day!" And Miss Tina shook her
head speaking very low. "But they used to be magni-
ficent!"
"Yes indeed,—we've Aspern's word for that."
And as I looked again at the old woman's wrappings
I could imagine her not having wished to allow any
supposition that the great poet had overdone it. But
I didn't waste my time in considering Juliana, in
whom the appearance of respiration was so slight as
to suggest that no human attention could ever help 104


THE ASPERN PAPERS
her more. I turned my eyes once more all over the
room, rummaging with them the closets, the chests of
drawers, the tables. Miss Tina at once noted their
direction and read, I think, what was in them; but she
didn't answer it, turning awayrestlessly, anxiously,
so that I felt rebuked, with reason, for an appetite
well-nigh indecent in the presence of our dying com-
panion. All the same I took another view, endeavour-
ing to pick out mentally the receptacle to try first, for
a person who should wish to put his hand on Miss
Bordereau's papers directly after her death. The
place was a dire confusion; it looked like the dressing-
room of an old actress. There were clothes hanging
over chairs, odd-looking shabby bundles here and
there, and various pasteboard boxes piled together,
battered, bulging and discoloured, which might have
been fifty years old. Miss Tina after a moment
noticed the direction of my eyes again, and, as if she
guessed how I judged such appearances — forgetting
I had no business to judge them at all — said, per-
haps to defend herself from the imputation of com-
plicity in the disorder:
"She likes it this way; we can't move things. There
are old bandboxes she has had most of her life."
Then she added, half-taking pity on my real thought:
"Those things were there." And she pointed to a
small low trunk which stood under a sofa that just
allowed room for it. It struck me as a queer super-
annuated coffer, of painted wood, with elaborate
handles and shrivelled straps and with the colour—
it had last been endued with a coat of light green— much rubbed off. It evidently had travelled with l°5


THE ASPERN PAPERS
Juliana in the olden time — in the days of her advent-
ures, which it had shared. It would have made a
strange figure arriving at a modern hotel.
"Were there — they aren't now?" I asked, startled
by Miss Tina's implication.
She was going to answer, but at that moment the
doctor came in — the doctor whom the little maid
had been sent to fetch and whom she had at last over-
taken. My servant, going on his own errand, had met
her with her companion in tow, and in the sociable
Venetian spirit, retracing his steps with them, had also
come up to the threshold of the padrona's room,
where I saw him peep over the doctor's shoulder. I
motioned him away the more instantly that the sight
of his prying face reminded me how little I myself had
to do there — an admonition confirmed by the sharp
way the little doctor eyed me, his air of taking me
for a rival who had the field before him. He was a
short fat brisk gentleman who wore the tall hat of his
profession and seemed to look at everything but his
patient. He kept me still in range, as if it struck
him I too should be better for a dose, so that I bowed
to him and left him with the women, going down to
smoke a cigar in the garden. I was nervous; I couldn't
go further; I couldn't leave the place. I don't know
exactly what I thought might happen, but I felt it
important to be there. I wandered about the alleys —
the warm night had come on — smoking cigar after
cigar and studying the light in Miss Bordereau's win-
dows. They were open now, I could see; the situation
was different. Sometimes the light moved, but not
quickly; it didn't suggest the hurry of a crisis. Was 106


THE ASPERN PAPERS
the old woman dying or was she already dead? Had
the doctor said that there was nothing to be done at
her tremendous age but to let her quietly pass away?
or had he simply announced with a look a little more
conventional that the end of the end had come? Were
the other two women just going and coming over the
offices that follow in such a case? It made me uneasy
not to be nearer, as if I thought the doctor himself
might carry away the papers with him. I bit my cigar
hard while it assailed me again that perhaps there
were now no papers to carry!
I wandered about an hour and more. I looked out
for Miss Tina at one of the windows, having a vague
idea that she might come there to give me some sign.
Wouldn't she see the red tip of my cigar in the dark
and feel sure I was hanging on to know what the
doctor had said? I'm afraid it's a proof of the gross-
ness of my anxieties that I should have taken in some
degree for granted at such an hour, in the midst of the
greatest change that could fall on her, poor Miss
Tina's having also a free mind for them. My servant
came down and spoke to me; he knew nothing save
that the doctor had gone after a visit of half an hour.
If he had stayed half an hour then Miss Bordereau
was still alive: it couldn't have taken so long to at-
test her decease. I sent the man out of the house;
there were moments when the sense of his curiosity
annoyed me, and this was one of them. He had been
watching my cigar-tip from an upper window, if Miss
Tina hadn't; he couldn't know what I was after and
I couldn't tell him, though I suspected in him fantas-
tic private theories about me which he thought fine 107


THE ASPERN PAPERS
'and which, had I more exactly known them, I should
have thought offensive.
I went upstairs at last, but I mounted no higher
than the sala. The door of Miss Bordereau's apart-
ment was open, showing from the parlour the dimness
of a poor candle. I went toward it with a light tread,
and at the same moment Miss Tina appeared and
stood looking at me as I approached. "She's better,
she's better," she said even before I had asked. "The
doctor has given her something; she woke up, came
back to life while he was there. He says there's no
immediate danger."
"No immediate danger? Surely he thinks her con-
dition serious."
"Yes, because she had been excited. That affects
her dreadfully."
"It will do so again then, because she works her-
self up. She did so this afternoon."
"Yes, she mustn't come out any more," said Miss
Tina with one of her lapses into a deeper detachment.
"What's the use of making such a remark as that,"
I permitted myself to ask, "if you begin to rattle her
about again the first time she bids you?"
"I won't — I won't do it any more.""You must learn to resist her," I went on. "Oh yes, I shall; I shall do so better if you tell me
it's right."
"You mustn't do it for me — you must do it for
yourself. It all comes back to you, if you're scared and
upset."
"Well, I'm not upset now," said Miss Tina
placidly enough. "She's very quiet."
108


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Is she conscious again — does she speak?"
"No, she doesn't speak, but she takes my hand.
She holds it fast."
"Yes," I returned, "I can see what force she still
has by the way she grabbed that picture this after-
noon. But if she holds you fast how comes it that
you're here?"
Miss Tina waited a little; though her face was in
deep shadow — she had her back to the light in the
parlour and I had put down my own candle far off,
near the door of the sala — I thought I saw her smile
ingenuously. "I came on purpose — I had heard your
step."
"Why I came on tiptoe,as soundlessly as possible."
"Well, I had heard you," said Miss Tina.
"And is your aunt alone now?"
"Oh no — Olimpia sits there."
On my side I debated. "Shall we then pass in
there?" And I nodded at the parlour; I wanted
more and more to be on the spot.
"We can't talk there — she'll hear us."
I was on the point of replying that in that case
we'd sit silent, but I felt too much this wouldn't do,
there was something I desired so immensely to ask
her. Thus I hinted we might walk a little in the sala,
keeping more at the other end, where we shouldn't
disturb our friend. Miss Tina assented uncondi-
tionally; the doctor was coming again, she said, and
she would be there to meet him at the door. We
strolled through the fine superfluous hall, where on
the marble floor — particularly as at first we said
nothing—our footsteps were more audible than I 109


THE ASPERN PAPERS
had expected. When we reached the other end—
the wide window, inveterately closed, connecting
with the balcony that overhung the canal — I sub-
mitted that we had best remain there, as she would
see the doctor arrive the sooner. I opened the window
and we passed out on the balcony. The air of the
canal seemed even heavier, hotter than that of the
sala. The place was hushed and void; the quiet
neighbourhood had gone to sleep. A lamp, here and
there, over the narrow black water, glimmered in
double; the voice of a man going homeward singing,
his jacket on his shoulder and his hat on his ear,
came to us from a distance. This didn't prevent the
scene from being very comme il faut, as Miss Bor-
dereau had called it the first time I saw her. Pre-
sently a gondola passed along the canal with its slow
rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it
in silence. It didn't stop, it didn't carry the doctor;
and after it had gone on I said to Miss Tina:
"And where are they now — the things that were
in the trunk?"
"In the trunk?"
"That green box you pointed out to me in her
room. You said her papers had been there; you
seemed to mean she had transferred them."
"Oh yes; they're not in the trunk," said Miss
Tina.
"May I ask if you've looked?"
"Yes, I've looked — for you."
"How for me, dear Miss Tina? Do you mean
you'd have given them to me if you had found them?"
—and I fairly trembled with the question.
no


THE ASPERN PAPERS
She delayed to reply and I waited. Suddenly she
broke out: "I don't know what I'd do — what I
wouldn't!"
"Would you look again — somewhere else?"
She had spoken with a strange unexpected emo-
tion, and she went on in the same tone: "I can't — I
can't —while she lies there. It isn't decent."
"No, it isn't decent," I replied gravely. "Let the
poor lady rest in peace." And the words, on my lips,
were not hypocritical, for I felt reprimanded and
shamed.
Miss Tina added in a moment, as if she had guessed
this and were sorry for me, but at the same time
wished to explain that I did push her, or at least
harp on the chord, too much: "I can't deceive her
that way. I can't deceive her — perhaps on her
deathbed."
"Heaven forbid I should ask you, though I've
been guilty myself!"
"You've been guilty?"
"I've sailed under false colours." I felt now I
must make a clean breast of it, must tell her I had
given her an invented name on account of my fear
her aunt would have heard of me and so refuse to
take me in. I explained this as well as that I had
really been a party to the letter addressed them by
John Cumnor months before.
She listened with great attention, almost in fact
gaping for wonder, and when I had made my con-
fession she said: "Then your real name — what is
it?" She repeated it over twice when I had told her,
accompanying it with the exclamation "Gracious, ill


THE ASPERN PAPERS
gracious!" Then she added: "I like your own best."
"So do I" —and I felt my laugh rueful. "Ouf!
it's a relief to get rid of the other."
"So it was a regular plot — a kind of conspiracy?"
"Oh a conspiracy — we were only two," I replied,
leaving out of course Mrs. Prest.
She considered; I thought she was perhaps going
to pronounce us very base. But this was not her way,
and she remarked after a moment, as in candid im-
partial contemplation: "How much you must want
them!"
"Oh I do, passionately!" I grinned, I fear, to
admit. And this chance made me go on, forgetting
my compunction of a moment before. "How can
she possibly have changed their place herself? How
can she walk? How can she arrive at that sort of
muscular exertion? How can she lift and carry
things?"
"Oh when one wants and when one has so much
will!" said Miss Tina as if she had thought over my
question already herself and had simply had no
choice but that answer — the idea that in the dead
of night, or at some moment when the coast was clear,
the old woman had been capable of a miraculous
effort.
"Have you questioned Olimpia? Hasn't she
helped her — has n't she done it for her?" I asked;
to which my friend replied promptly and positively
that their servant had had nothing to do with the
matter, though without admitting definitely that she
had spoken to her. It was as if she were a little shy, 112


THE ASPERN PAPERS
a little ashamed now, of letting me see how much she
had entered into my uneasiness and had me on her
mind. Suddenly she said to me without any imme-
diate relevance:
"I rather feel you a new person, you know, now
that you've a new name."
"It isn't a new one; it's a very good old one, thank
fortune!"
She looked at me a moment. "Well, I do like it
better."
"Oh if you didn't I would almost go on with the
other!"
"Would you really?"
I laughed again, but I returned for all answer:
"Of course if she can rummage about that way she
can perfectly have burnt them."
"You must wait — you must wait," Miss Tina
mournfully moralised; and her tone ministered little
to my patience, for it seemed after all to accept that
wretched possibility. I would teach myself to wait,
I declared nevertheless; because in the first place I
couldn't do otherwise and in the second I had her
promise, given me the other night, that she would
help me.
"Of course if the papers are gone that's no use,"
she said; not as if she wished to recede, but only to
be conscientious.
"Naturally. But if you could only find out!" I
groaned, quivering again.
"I thought you promised you'd wait."
"Oh you mean wait even for that?"
"For what then?"
"3


THE ASPERN PAPERS
"Ah nothing," I answered rather foolishly, being
ashamed to tell her what had been implied in my
acceptance of delay — the idea that she would per-
haps do more for me than merely find out.
I know not if she guessed this; at all events she
seemed to bethink herself of some propriety of show-
ing me more rigour. "I didn't promise to deceive,
did I? I don't think I did."
"It doesn't much matter whether you did or not,
for you couldn't!"
Nothing is more possible than that she wouldn't
have contested this even hadn't she been diverted
by our seeing the doctor's gondola shoot into the
little canal and approach the house. I noted that he
came as fast as if he believed our proprietress still in
danger. We looked down at him while he disem-
barked and then went back into the sala to meet him.
When he came up, however, I naturally left Miss
Tina to go ofF with him alone, only asking her leave
to come back later for news.
I went out of the house and walked far, as far as
the Piazza, where my restlessness declined to quit
me. I was unable to sit down; it was very late now
though there were people still at the little tables in
front of the cafes: I could but uneasily revolve, and
I did so half a dozen times. The only comfort, none
the less, was in my having told Miss Tina who I
really was. At last I took my way home again, getting
gradually and all but inextricably lost, as I did when-
ever I went out in Venice: so that it was considerably
past midnight when I reached my door. The sala,
upstairs, was as dark as usual and my lamp as I 114


THE ASPERN PAPERS
crossed it found nothing satisfactory to show me. I
was disappointed, for I had notified Miss Tina that
I would come back for a report, and I thought she
might have left a light there as a sign. The door of
the ladies' apartment was closed; which seemed a
hint that my faltering friend had gone to bed in im-
patience of waiting for me. I stood in the middle of
the place, considering, hoping she would hear me and
perhaps peep out, saying to myself too that she would
never go to bed with her aunt in a state so critical;
she would sit up and watch — she would be in a chair,
in her dressing-gown. I went nearer the door; I
stopped there and listened. I heard nothing at all
and at last I tapped gently. No answer came and
after another minute I turned the handle. There
was no light in the room; this ought to have pre-
vented my entrance, but it had no such effect. If I
have frankly stated the importunities, the indelica-
cies, of which my desire to possess myself of Jeffrey
Aspern's papers had made me capable I need n't
shrink, it seems to me, from confessing this last in-
discretion. I regard it as the worst thing I did, yet
there were extenuating circumstances. I was deeply
though doubtless not disinterestedly anxious for
more news of Juliana, and Miss Tina had accepted
from me, as it were, a rendezvous which it might
have been a point of honour with me to keep. It may
be objected that her leaving the place dark was a
positive sign that she released me, and to this I can
only reply that I wished not to be released.
The door of Miss Bordereau's room was open and
I could see beyond it the faintness of a taper. There "5


THE AS PERN PAPERS
was no sound — my footstep caused no one to stir.
I came further into the room; I lingered there lamp
in hand. I wanted to give Miss Tina a chance to come
to me if, as I couldn't doubt, she were still with her
aunt. I made no noise to call her; I only waited to
see if she wouldn't notice my light. She didn't, and
I explained this — I found afterwards I was right —by the idea that she had fallen asleep. If she had
fallen asleep her aunt was not on her mind, and my
explanation ought to have led me to go out as I had
come. I must repeat again that it didn't, for I found
myself at the same moment given up to something
else. I had no definite purpose, no bad intention,
but felt myself held to the spot by an acute, though
absurd, sense of opportunity. Opportunity for what
I couldn't have said, inasmuch as it wasn't in my
mind that I might proceed to thievery. Even had
this tempted me I was confronted with the evident
fact that Miss Bordereau didn't leave her secretary,
her cupboard and the drawers of her tables gaping.
I had no keys, no tools and no ambition to smash her
furniture. None the less it came to me that I was
now, perhaps alone, unmolested, at the hour of free-
dom and safety, nearer to the source of my hopes
than I had ever been. I held up my lamp, let the
light play on the different objects as if it could tell
me something. Still there came no movement from
the other room. If Miss Tina was sleeping she was
sleeping sound. Was she doing so — generous creat-
ure —on purpose to leave me the field? Did she
know I was there and was she just keeping quiet to
see what I would do — what I could do? Yet might 116


THE ASPERN PAPERS
I, when it came to that? She herself knew even
better than I how little.
I stopped in front of the secretary, gaping at it
vainly and no doubt grotesquely; for what had it to
say to me after all? In the first place it was locked,
and in the second it almost surely contained nothing
in which I was interested. Ten to one the papers
had been destroyed, and even if they hadn't the
keen old woman wouldn't have put them in such a
place as that after removing them from the green
trunk — would n't have transferred them, with the
idea of their safety on her brain, from the better
hiding-place to the worse. The secretary was more
conspicuous, more exposed in a room in which she
could no longer mount guard. It opened with a key,
but there was a small brass handle, like a button, as
well: I saw this as I played my lamp over it. I did
something more, for the climax of my crisis; I caught
a glimpse of the possibility that Miss Tina wished
me really to understand. If she didn't so wish me, if
she wished me to keep away, why hadn't she locked
the door of communication between the sitting-room
and the sala? That would have been a definite sign
that I was to leave them alone. If I didn't leave
them alone she meant me to come for a purpose — a
purpose now represented by the super-subtle inference
that to oblige me she had unlocked the secretary.
She hadn't left the key, but the lid would probably
move if I touched the button. This possibility pressed
me hard and I bent very close to judge. I didn't
propose to do anything, not even — not in the least
— to let down the lid; I only wanted to test my theory, 117


THE ASPERN PAPERS
to see if the cover would move. I touched the button
with my hand — a mere touch would tell me; and
as I did so — it is embarrassing for me to relate it —I looked over my shoulder. It was a chance, an in-
stinct, for I had really heard nothing. I almost let
my luminary drop and certainly I stepped back,
straightening myself up at what I saw. Juliana stood
there in her night-dress, by the doorway of her room,
watching me; her hands were raised, she had lifted
the everlasting curtain that covered half her face, and
for the first, the last, the only time I beheld her ex-
traordinary eyes. They glared at me; they were like
the sudden drench, for a caught burglar, of a flood of
gaslight; they made me horribly ashamed. I never
shall forget her strange little bent white tottering
figure, with its lifted head, her attitude, her expres-
sion; neither shall I forget the tone in which as I
turned, looking at her, she hissed out passionately,
furiously:
"Ah you publishing scoundrel!"
I can't now say what I stammered to excuse my-
self, to explain; but I went toward her to tell her I
meant no harm. She waved me off with her old
hands, retreating before me in horror; and the next
thing I knew she had fallen back with a quick spasm,
as if death had descended on her, into Miss Tina's
arms.


IX
I left Venice the next morning, directly on learning
that my hostess had not succumbed, as I feared at
the moment, to the shock I had given her — the
shock I may also say she had given me. How in the
world could I have supposed her capable of getting
out of bed by herself? I failed to see Miss Tina be-
fore going; I only saw the donna, whom I entrusted
with a note for her younger mistress. In this note I
mentioned that I should be absent but a few days.
I went to Treviso, to Bassano, to Castelfranco; I
took walks and drives and looked at musty old
churches with ill-lighted pictures; I spent hours
seated smoking at the doors of cafes, where there were
flies and yellow curtains, on the shady side of sleepy
little squares. In spite of these pastimes, which were
mechanical and perfunctory, I scantly enjoyed my
travels: I had had to gulp down a bitter draught and
could nTget rid of the taste. It had been devilish
awkward, as the young men say, to be found by
Juliana in the dead of night examining the attach-
ment of her bureau; and it had not been less so to
have to believe for a good many hours after that it
was highly probable I had killed her. My humilia-
tion galled me, but I had to make the best of it,
had, in writing to Miss Tina, to minimise it, as well
as account for the posture in which I had been
discovered. As she gave me no word of answer I 119


THE ASPERN PAPERS
could n't know what impression I made on her. It
rankled for me that I had been called a publishing
scoundrel, since certainly I did publish and no less
certainly hadn't been very delicate. There was a
moment when I stood convinced that the only way
to purge my dishonour was to take myself straight
away on the instant; to sacrifice my hopes and relieve
the two poor women for ever of the oppression of my
intercourse. Then I reflected that I had better try
a short absence first, for I must already have had a
sense (unexpressed and dim) that in disappearing
completely it wouldn't be merely my own hopes I
should condemn to extinction. It would perhaps
answer if I kept dark long enough to give the elder
lady time to believe herself rid of me. That she would
wish to be rid of me after this — if I wasn't rid of
her — was now not to be doubted: that midnight
monstrosity would have cured her of the disposition
to put up with my company for the sake of my dol-
lars. I said to myself that after all I couldn't abandon
Miss Tina, and I continued to say this even while I
noted that she quite ignored my earnest request —
I had given her two or three addresses, at little towns,
paste restante — for some sign of her actual state.
I would have made my servant write me news but
that he was unable to manage a pen. Couldn't I
measure the scorn of Miss Tina's silence — little
disdainful as she had ever been? Really the soreness
pressed; yet if I had scruples about going back I had
others about not doing so, and I wanted to put my-
self on a better footing. The end of it was that I did
return to Venice on the twelfth day; and as my gon120


THE ASPERN PAPERS
dola gently bumped against our palace steps a fine
palpitation of suspense showed me the violence my
absence had done me.
I had faced about so abruptly that I hadn't even
telegraphed to my servant. He was therefore not
at the station to meet me, but he poked out his head
from an upper window when I reached the house.
"They have put her into earth, quella vecchia," he
said to me in the lower hall while he shouldered my
valise; and he grinned and almost winked as if he
knew I should be pleased with his news.
"She's dead!" I cried, giving him a very different
look.
"So it appears, since they've buried her.""It's all over then? When was the funeral?""The other yesterday. But a funeral you could
scarcely call it, signore: roba da niente — un piccolo
passeggio brutto of two gondolas. Poveretta!" the
man continued, referring apparently to Miss Tina.
His conception of funerals was that they were mainly
to amuse the living.
I wanted to know about Miss Tina, how she might
be and generally where; but I asked him no more ques-
tions till we had got upstairs. Now that the fact had
met me I took a bad view of it, especially of the idea
that poor Miss Tina had had to manage by herself
after the end. What did she know about arrange-
ments, about the steps to take in such a case? Pover-
etta indeed! I could only hope the doctor had given
her support and that she hadn't been neglected by
the old friends of whom she had told me, the little
band of the faithful whose fidelity consisted in coming 121


THE AS PERN PAPERS
to the house once a year. I elicited from my servant
that two old ladies and an old gentleman had in fact
rallied round Miss Tina and had supported her—
they had come for her in a gondola of their own— during the journey to the cemetery, the little red-
walled island of tombs which lies to the north of the
town and on the way to Murano. It appeared from
these signs that the Misses Bordereau were Catholics,
a discovery I had never made, as the old woman
couldn't go to church and her niece, so far as I per-
ceived, either didn't, or went only to early mass in
the parish before I was stirring. Certainly even the
priests respected their seclusion; I had never caught
the whisk of the curato's skirt. That evening, an hour
later, I sent my servant down with five words on a
card to ask if Miss Tina would see me a few moments.
She was not in the house, where he had sought her, he
told me when he came back, but in the garden walking
about to refresh herself and picking the flowers quite
as if they belonged to her. He had found her there
and she would be happy to see me.
I went down and passed half an hour with poor
Miss Tina. She had always had a look of musty
mourning, as if she were wearing out old robes of sor-
row that wouldn't come to an end; and in this par-
ticular she made no different show. But she clearly
had been crying, crying a great deal — simply, satis-
fyingly, refreshingly, with a primitive retarded sense
of solitude and violence. But she had none of the airs
or graces of grief, and I was almost surprised to see
her stand there in the first dusk with her hands full of
admirable roses and smile at me with reddened eyes. 122


THE ASPERN PAPERS
Her white face, in the frame of her mantilla, looked
longer, leaner than usual. I hadn't doubted her being
irreconcileably disgusted with me, her considering
I ought to have been on the spot to advise her, to help
her; and, though I believed there was no rancour in
her composition and no great conviction of the import-
ance of her affairs, I had prepared myself for a
change in her manner, for some air of injury and
estrangement, which should say to my conscience:
"Well, you're a nice person to have professed things!"
But historic truth compels me to declare that this poor
lady's dull face ceased to be dull, almost ceased to be
plain, as she turned it gladly to her late aunt's lodger.
That touched him extremely and he thought it simpli-
fied his situation until he found it didn't. I was as
kind to her that evening as I knew how to be, and I
walked about the garden with her as long as seemed
good. There was no explanation of any sort between
us; I didn't ask her why she hadn't answered my let-
ter. Still less did I repeat what I had said to her in that
communication; if she chose to let me suppose she had
forgotten the position in which Miss Bordereau had
surprised me and the effect of the discovery on the old
woman, I was quite willing to take it that way: I was
grateful to her for not treating me as if I had killed
her aunt.
We strolled and strolled, though really not much
passed between us save the recognition of her be-
reavement, conveyed in my manner and in the expres-
sion she had of depending on me now, since I let her
see I still took an interest in her. Miss Tina's was no
breast for the pride or the pretence of independence; 123


THE ASPERN PAPERS
she didn't in the least suggest that she knew at pre-
sent what would become of her. I forbore to press on
that question, however, for I certainly was not pre-
pared to say that I would take charge of her. I was
cautious; not ignobly, I think, for I felt her knowledge
of life to be so small that in her unsophisticated vision
there would be no reason why— since I seemed to
pity her — I shouldn't somehow look after her. She
told me how her aunt had died, very peacefully at the
last, and how everything had been done afterwards by
the care of her good friends —fortunately, thanks to
me, she said, smiling, there was money in the house.
She repeated that when once the "nice" Italians
like you they are your friends for life, and when we
had gone into this she asked me about my giro, my
impressions, my adventures, the places I had seen. I
told her what I could, making it up partly, I'm
afraid, as in my disconcerted state I had taken little
in; and after she had heard me she exclaimed, quite
as if she had forgotten her aunt and her sorrow,
"Dear, dear, how much I should like to do such
things — to take an amusing little journey!" It came
over me for the moment that I ought to propose some
enterprise, say I would accompany her anywhere she
liked; and I remarked at any rate that a pleasant ex-
cursion — to give her a change— might be managed:
we would think of it, talk it over. I spoke never a
word of the Aspern documents, asked no question as
to what she had ascertained or what had otherwise
happened with regard to them before Juliana's death.
It wasn't that I wasn't on pins and needles to know,
but that I thought it more decent not to show greed 124


THE AS PERN PAPERS
again so soon after the catastrophe. I hoped she her-
self would say something, but she never glanced that
way, and I thought this natural at the time. Later on,
however, that night, it occurred to me that her silence
was matter for suspicion; since if she had talked of my
movements, of anything so detached as the Giorgione
at Castelfranco, she might have alluded to what she
could easily remember was in my mind. It was not to
be supposed the emotion produced by her aunt's
death had blotted out the recollection that I was inter-
ested in that lady's relics, and I fidgeted afterwards as
it came to me that her reticence might very possibly
just mean that no relics survived. We separated in the
garden — it was she who said she must go in; now that
she was alone on the piano nobile I felt that (judged at
any rate by Venetian ideas) I was on rather a different
footing in regard to the invasion of it. As I shook
hands with her for good-night I asked if she had
some general plan, had thought over what she
had best do. "Oh yes, oh yes, but I haven't settled
anything yet," she replied quite cheerfully. Was her
cheerfulness explained by the impression that I would
settle for her?
I was glad the next morning that we had neglected
practical questions, as this gave me a pretext for
seeing her again immediately. There was a practical
enough question now to be touched on. I owed it to
her to let her know formally that of course I didn't
expect her to keep me on as a lodger, as also to show
some interest in her own tenure, what she might have
on her hands in the way of a lease. But I was not
destined, as befell, to converse with her for more than 125


THE ASPERN PAPERS
an instant on either of these points. I sent her no mes-
sage; I simply went down to the sala and walked to
and fro there. I knew she would come out; she would
promptly see me accessible. Somehow I preferred not
to be shut up with her; gardens and big halls seemed
better places to talk. It was a splendid morning, with
something in the air that told of the waning of the
long Venetian summer; a freshness from the sea that
stirred the flowers in the garden and made a pleasant
draught in the house, less shuttered and darkened
now than when the old woman was alive. It was the
beginning of autumn, of the end of the golden months.
With this it was the end of my experiment — or would
be in the course of half an hour, when I should really
have learned that my dream had been reduced to
ashes. After that there would be nothing left for me
but to go to the station; for seriously — and as it
struck me in the morning light — I couldn't linger
there to act as guardian to a piece of middle-aged
female helplessness. If she hadn't saved the papers
wherein should I be indebted to her? I think I winced
a little as I asked myself how much, if she had saved
them, I should have to recognise and, as it were,
reward such a courtesy. Mightn't that service after
all saddle me with a guardianship? If this idea didn't
make me more uncomfortable as I walked up and
down it was because I was convinced I had nothing
to look to. If the old woman hadn't destroyed every-
thing before she pounced on me in the parlour she had
done so the next day.
It took Miss Tina rather longer than I had expected
to act on my calculation; but when at last she came 126


THE ASPERN PAPERS
out she looked at me without surprise. I mentioned I
had been waiting for her and she asked why I hadn't
let her know. I was glad a few hours later on that I
had checked myself before remarking that a friendly
intuition might have told her: it turned to comfort for
me that I hadn't played even to that mild extent on
her sensibility. What I did say was virtually the truth
— that I was too nervous, since I expected her now to
settle my fate.
"Your fate?" said Miss Tina, giving me a queer
look; and as she spoke I noticed a rare change in her.
Yes, she was other than she had been the evening
before — less natural and less easy. She had been
crying the day before and was not crying now, yet she
struck me as less confident. It was as if something had
happened to her during the night, or at least as if she
had thought of something that troubled her— some-
thing in particular that affected her relations with me,
made them more embarrassing and more compli-
cated. Had she simply begun to feel that her aunt's
not being there now altered my position?
"I mean about our papers. Are there any? You
must know now."
"Yes, there are a great many; more than I sup-
posed." I was struck with the way her voice trembled
as she told me this.
"Do you mean you've got them in there — and
that I may see them?"
"I don't think you can see them," said Miss Tina
with an extraordinary expression of entreaty in her
eyes, as if the dearest hope she had in the world now
was that I wouldn't take them from her. But how 127


THE ASPERN PAPERS
could she expect me to make such a sacrifice as that
after all that had passed between us? What had I
come back to Venice for but to see them, to take them?
My joy at learning they were still in existence was
such that if the poor woman had gone down on her
knees to beseech me never to mention them again
I would have treated the proceeding as a bad joke.
"I've got them but I can't show them," she lament-
ably added.
"Not even to me? Ah Miss Tina!" I broke into
a tone of infinite remonstrance and reproach.
She coloured and the tears came back to her eyes;
I measured the anguish it cost her to take such a
stand, which a dreadful sense of duty had imposed on
her. It made me quite sick to find myself confronted
with that particular obstacle; all the more that it
seemed to me I had been distinctly encouraged to
leave it out of account. I quite held Miss Tina to have
assured me that if she had no greater hindrance than
that—! "You don't mean to say you made her a
deathbed promise f It was precisely against your
doing anything of that sort that I thought I was safe.
Oh I would rather she had burnt the papers out-
right than have to reckon with such a treachery as
that."
"No, it isn't a promise," said Miss Tina."Pray what is it then?"
She hung fire, but finally said: "She tried to burn
them, but I prevented it. She had hid them in her
bed."
"In her bed —?"
"Between the mattresses. That's where she put
128


THE ASPERN PAPERS
them when she took them out of the trunk. I can't
understand how she did it, because Olimpia didn't
help her. She tells me so and I believe her. My aunt
only told her afterwards, so that she shouldn't undo
the bed — anything but the sheets. So it was very
badly made," added Miss Tina simply.
"I should think so! And how did she try to burn
them?"
"She didn't try much; she was too weak those last
days. But she told me — she charged me. Oh it was
terrible! She couldn't speak after that night. She
could only make signs."
."And what did you do?"
"I took them away. I locked them up."
"In the secretary?"
"Yes, in the secretary," said Miss Tina, reddening
again.
"Did you tell her you'd burn them?"
"No, I did n't — on purpose."
"On purpose to gratify me?"
"Yes, only for that."
"And what good will you have done me if after all
you won't show them?"
"Oh none. I know that — I know that," she dis-
mally sounded.
"And did she believe you had destroyed them?"
"I don't know what she believed at the last. I
couldn't tell — she was too far gone."
"Then if there was no promise and no assurance
I can't see what ties you."
"Oh she hated it so — she hated it so! She was
so jealous. But here's the portrait — you may have 129


THE ASPERN PAPERS
that," the poor woman announced, taking the little
picture, wrapped up in the same manner in which her
aunt had wrapped it, out of her pocket.
"I may have it — do you mean you give it to me?"
I gasped as it passed into my hand.
"Oh yes."
"But it's worth money — a large sum."
"Well!" said Miss Tina, still with her strange look.
I didn't know what to make of it, for it could
scarcely mean that she wanted to bargain like her
aunt. She spoke as for making me a present. "I can't
take it from you as a gift," I said, "and yet I can't
afford to pay you for it according to the idea Miss
Bordereau had of its value. She rated it at a thousand
pounds."
"Couldn't we sell it?" my friend threw off."God forbid! I prefer the picture to the money.""Well then keep it.""You're very generous.""So are you."
"I don't know why you should think so," I returned;
and this was true enough, for the good creature ap-
peared to have in her mind some rich reference that I
didn't in the least seize.
"Well, you've made a great difference for me," she
said.
I looked at Jeffrey Aspern's face in the little pict-
ure, partly in order not to look at that of my com-
panion, which had begun to trouble me, even to
frighten me a little — it had taken so very odd, so
strained and unnatural a cast. I made no answer to
this last declaration; I but privately consulted Jeffrey 130


THE ASPERN PAPERS
Aspern's delightful eyes with my own — they were so
young and brilliant and yet so wise and so deep: I
asked him what on earth was the matter with Miss
Tina. He seemed to smile at me with mild mockery;
he might have been amused at my case. I had got into
a pickle for him — as if he needed it! He was unsatis-
factory for the only moment since I had known him.
Nevertheless, now that I held the little picture in my
hand I felt it would be a precious possession. "Is this
a bribe to make me give up the papers?" I presently
and all perversely asked. "Much as I value this, you
know, if I were to be obliged to choose the papers are
what I should prefer. Ah but ever so much!"
"How can you choose — how can you choose?"
Miss Tina returned slowly and woefully.
"I see! Of course there's nothing to be said if you
regard the interdiction that rests on you as quite insur-
mountable. In this case it must seem to you that to
part with them would be an impiety of the worst kind,
a simple sacrilege!"
She shook her head, only lost in the queerness of her
case. "You'd understand if you had known her. I'm
afraid," she quavered suddenly — "I'm afraid! She
was terrible when she was angry."
"Yes, I saw something of that, that night. She was
terrible. Then I saw her eyes. Lord, they were fine!"
"I see them — they stare at me in the dark!" said
Miss Tina.
"You've grown nervous with all you 've been
through.""Oh yes, very — very!"
"You mustn't mind; that will pass away," I said
131


THE ASPERN PAPERS
kindly. Then I added resignedly, for it really seemed
to me that I must accept the situation: "Well, so it is,
and it can't be helped. I must renounce." My friend,
at this, with her eyes on me, gave a low soft moan,
and I went on: "I only wish to goodness she had de-
stroyed them: then there would be nothing more to
say. And I can't understand why, with her ideas, she
didn't."
"Oh she lived on them!" said Miss Tina.
"You can imagine whether that makes me want
less to see them," I returned not quite so desperately.
"But don't let me stand here as if I had it in my soul
to tempt you to anything base. Naturally, you under-
stand, I give up my rooms. I leave Venice immedi-
ately." And I took up my hat, which I had placed on
a chair. We were still rather awkwardly on our feet
in the middle of the sala. She had left the door of the
apartments open behind her, but had not led me that
way.
A strange spasm came into her face as she saw me
take my hat. "Immediately — do you mean to-day?"
The tone of the words was tragic — they were a cry of
desolation.
"Oh no; not so long as I can be of the least service
to you."
"Well, just a day or two more —just two or three
days," she panted. Then controlling herself she added
in another manner: "She wanted to say something to
me — the last day — something very particular. But
she couldn't."
"Something very particular?"
"Something more about the papers."132


THE AS PERN PAPERS
"And did you guess — have you any idea?""No, I've tried to think — but I don't know. I've
thought all kinds of things.""As for instance?"
"Well, that if you were a relation it would be
different."
I wondered. "If I were a relation —?"
"If you weren't a stranger. Then it would be the
same for you as for me. Anything that's mine would
be yours, and you could do what you like. I shouldn't
be able to prevent you — and you'd have no respons-
ibility."
She brought out this droll explanation with a nerv-
ous rush and as if speaking words got by heart.
They gave me the impression of a subtlety which at
first I failed to follow. But after a moment her face
helped me to see further, and then the queerest of
lights came to me. It was embarrassing, and I bent
my head over Jeffrey Aspern's portrait. What an odd
expression was in his face!"Get out of it as you can,
my dear fellow!" I put the picture into the pocket of
my coat and said to Miss Tina: "Yes, I'll sell it for
you. I shan't get a thousand pounds by any means,
but I shall get something good." She looked at me through pitiful tears, but seemed
to try to smile as she returned: "We can divide the
money."
"No, no, it shall be ah\yours." Then I went on:
"I think I know what your poor aunt wanted to say.
She wanted to give directions that her papers should
be buried with her."
Miss Tina appeared to weigh this suggestion; after 133


THE ASPERN PAPERS
which she answered with striking decision, "Oh no,
she wouldn't have thought that safe!"
"It seems to me nothing could be safer."
"She had an idea that when people want to publish
they're capable —!" And she paused, very red.
"Of violating a tomb? Mercy on us, what must
she have thought of me!"
"She wasn't just, she wasn't generous!" my com-
panion cried with sudden passion.
The light that had come into my mind a moment
before spread further. "Ah don't say that, for we are
a dreadful race." Then I pursued: "If she left a will,
that may give you some idea."
"I've found nothing of the sort — she destroyed
it. She was very fond of me," Miss Tina added with
an effect of extreme inconsequence. "She wanted
me to be happy. And if any person should be kind
to me — she wanted to speak of that."
I was almost awestricken by the astuteness with
which the good lady found herself inspired, transpar-
ent astuteness as it was and stitching, as the phrase
is, with white thread. "Depend upon it she didn't
want to make any provision that would be agreeable
to me."
"No, not to you, but quite to me. She knew I
should like it if you could carry out your idea. Not
because she cared for you, but because she did think
of me," Miss Tina went on with her unexpected
persuasive volubility. "You could see the things—
you could use them." She stopped, seeing I grasped
the sense of her conditional — stopped long enough
for me to give some sign that I didn't give. She must 134


THE ASPERN PAPERS
have been conscious, however, that though my face
showed the greatest embarrassment ever painted on
a human countenance it was not set as a stone, it was
also full of compassion. It was a comfort to me a
long time afterwards to consider that she couldn't
have seen in me the smallest symptom of disrespect.
"I don't know what to do; I'm too tormented, I'm
too ashamed!" she continued with vehemence. Then
turning away from me and burying her face in her
hands she burst into a flood of tears. If she didn't
know what to do it may be imagined whether I knew
better. I stood there dumb, watching her while her
sobs resounded in the great empty hall. In a moment
she was up at me again with her streaming eyes.
"I'd give you everything, and she'd understand,
where she is — she'd forgive me!"
"Ah Miss Tina — ah Miss Tina," I stammered
for all reply. I didn't know what to do, as I say, but
at a venture I made a wild vague movement in con-
sequence of which I found myself at the door. I re-
member standing there and saying "It would n't do,
it wouldn't do!" — saying it pensively, awkwardly,
grotesquely, while I looked away to the opposite end
of the sala as at something very interesting. The
next thing I remember is that I was downstairs and
out of the house. My gondola was there and my
gondolier, reclining on the cushions, sprang up as
soon as he saw me. I jumped in and to his usual
"Dove commanda?" replied, in a tone that made
him stare: "Anywhere, anywhere; out into the
lagoon!"
He rowed me away and I sat there prostrate,
135


THE ASPERN PAPERS
groaning softly to myself, my hat pulled over my
brow. What in the name of the preposterous did she
mean if she didn't mean to offer me her hand? That
was the price — that was the price! And did she
think I wanted it, poor deluded infatuated extra-
vagant lady? My gondolier, behind me, must have
seen my ears red as I wondered, motionless there
under the fluttering tenda with my hidden face,
noticing nothing as we passed — wondered whether
her delusion, her infatuation had been my own reck-
less work. Did she think I had made love to her
even to get the papers f I hadn't, I hadn't; I re-
peated that over to myself for an hour, for two hours,
till I was wearied if not convinced. I don't know
where, on the lagoon, my gondolier took me; we
floated aimlessly and with slow rare strokes. At last
I became conscious that we were near the Lido, far
up, on the right hand, as you turn your back to Venice,
and I made him put me ashore. I wanted to walk,
to move, to shed some of my bewilderment. I crossed
the narrow strip and got to the sea-beach— I took
my way toward Malamocco. But presently I flung
myself down again on the warm sand, in the breeze,
on the coarse dry grass. It took it out of me to think
I had been so much at fault, that I had unwittingly
but none the less deplorably trifled. But I hadn't
given her cause — distinctly I hadn't. I had said to
Mrs. Prest that I would make love to her; but it had
been a joke without consequences and I had never
said it to my victim. I had been as kind as possible
because I really liked her; but since when had that
become a crime where a woman of such an age and 136


THE ASPERN PAPERS
such an appearance was concerned? I am far from
remembering clearly the succession of events and
feelings during this long day of confusion, which I
spent entirely in wandering about, without going
home, until late at night: it only comes back to me
that there were moments when I pacified my con-
science and others when I lashed it into pain. I
didn't laugh all day — that I do recollect; the case,
however it might have struck others, seemed to me
so little amusing. I should have been better em-
ployed perhaps in taking in the comic side of it. At
any rate, whether I had given cause or not, there
was no doubt whatever that I couldn't pay the price.
I couldn't accept the proposal. I couldn't, for a
bundle of tattered papers, marry a ridiculous pathetic
provincial old woman. It was a proof of how little
she supposed the idea would come to me that she
should have decided to suggest it herself in that prac-
tical argumentative heroic way — with the timidity,
however, so much more striking than the boldness,
that her reasons appeared to come first and her feel-
ings afterward.
As the day went on I grew to wish I had never
heard of Aspern's relics, and I cursed the extra-
vagant curiosity that had put John Cumnor on the
scent of them. We had more than enough material
without them, and my predicament was the just
punishment of that most fatal of human follies, our
not having known when to stop. It was very well to
say it was no predicament, that the way out was
simple, that I had only to leave Venice by the first
train in the morning, after addressing Miss Tina a 137


THE ASPERN PAPERS
note which should be placed in her hand as soon as
I got clear of the house; for it was strong proof of my
quandary that when I tried to make up the note to
my taste in advance — I would put it on paper as
soon as I got home, before going to bed — I couldn't
think of anything but "How can I thank you for
the rare confidence you've placed in me?" That
would never do; it sounded exactly as if an accept-
ance were to follow. Of course I might get off with-
out writing at all, but that would be brutal, and my
idea was still to exclude brutal solutions. As my
confusion cooled I lost myself in wonder at the im-
portance I had attached to Juliana's crumpled scraps;
the thought of them became odious to me and I was
as vexed with the old witch for the superstition that
had prevented her from destroying them as I was
with myself for having already spent more money
than I could afford in attempting to control their
fate. I forget what I did, where I went after leaving
the Lido and at what hour or with what recovery of
composure I made my way back to my boat. I only
know that in the afternoon, when the air was aglow
with the sunset, I was standing before the church of
Saints John and Paul and looking up at the small
square-jawed face of Bartolommeo Colleoni, the
terrible condottiere who sits so sturdily astride of his
huge bronze horse on the high pedestal on which
Venetian gratitude maintains him. The statue is
incomparable, the finest of all mounted figures, un-
less that of Marcus Aurelius, who rides benignant
before the Roman Capitol, be finer: but I was not
thinking of that; I only found myself staring at the 138


THE ASPERN PAPERS
triumphant captain as if he had had an oracle on his
lips. The western light shines into all his grimness
at that hour and makes it wonderfully personal. But
he continued to look far over my head, at the red
immersion of another day — he had seen so many
go down into the lagoon through the centuries—
and if he were thinking of battles and stratagems
they were of a different.quality from any I had to tell
him of. He couldn't direct me what to do, gaze up
at him as I might. Was it before this or after that I
wandered about for an hour in the small canals, to
the continued stupefaction of my gondolier, who had
never seen me so restless and yet so void of a purpose
and could extract from me no order but "Go any-
where— everywhere — all over the place"? He
reminded me that I had not lunched and expressed
therefore respectfully the hope that I would dine
earlier. He had had long periods of leisure during
the day, when I had left the boat and rambled, so
that I was not obliged to consider him, and I told him
that till the morrow, for reasons, I should touch no
meat. It was an effect of poor Miss Tina's proposal,
not altogether auspicious, that I had quite lost my
appetite. I don't know why it happened that on this
occasion I was more than ever struck with that queer
air of sociability, of cousinship and family life, which
makes up half the expression of Venice. Without
streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutal-
ity of horses, and with its little winding ways where
people crowd together, where voices sound as in the
corridors of a house, where the human step circulates
as if it skirted the angles of furniture and shoes never 139


THE ASPERN PAPERS
wear out, the place has the character of an immense
collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is
the most ornamented corner and palaces and churches,
for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose,
tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration.
And somehow the splendid common domicile, fa-
miliar domestic and resonant, also resembles a
theatre with its actors clicking over bridges and, in
straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas.
As you sit in your gondola the footways that in cer-
tain parts edge the canals assume to the eye the im-
portance of a stage, meeting it at the same angle, and
the Venetian figures, moving to and fro against the
battered scenery of their little houses of comedy,
strike you as members of an endless dramatic troupe. I went to bed that night very tired and without being
able to compose an address to Miss Tina. Was this
failure the reason why I became conscious the next
morning as soon as I awoke of a determination to see
the poor lady again the first moment she would
receive me? That had something to do with it, but
what had still more was the fact that during my sleep
the oddest revulsion had taken place in my spirit. I
found myself aware of this almost as soon as I opened
my eyes: it made me jump out of my bed with the
movement of a man who remembers that he has left
the house-door ajar or a candle burning under a shelf.
Was I still in time to save my goods? That question
was in my heart; for what had now come to pass was
that in the unconscious cerebration of sleep I had
swung back to a passionate appreciation of Juliana's
treasure. The pieces composing it were now more 140


THE ASPERN PAPERS
precious than ever and a positive ferocity had come
into my need to acquire them. The condition Miss
Tina had attached to that act no longer appeared an
obstacle worth thinking of, and for an hour this
morning my repentant imagination brushed it aside.
It was absurd I should be able to invent nothing;
absurd to renounce so easily and turn away helpless
from the idea that the only way to become possessed
was to unite myself to her for life. I mightn't unite
myself, yet I might still have what she had. I must
add that by the time I sent down to ask if she would
see me I had invented no alternative, though in fact
I drew out my dressing in the interest of my wit.
This failure was humiliating, yet what could the alter-
native be? Miss Tina sent back word I might come;
and as I descended the stairs and crossed the sala to
her door — this time she received me in her aunt's
forlorn parlour — I hoped she wouldn't think my
announcement was to be "favourable." She cer-
tainly would have understood my recoil of the day
before.
As soon as I came into the room I saw that she had
done so, but I also saw something which had not been
in my forecast. Poor Miss Tina's sense of her failure
had produced a rare alteration in her, but I had been
too full of stratagems and spoils to think of that. Now
I took it in; I"~can scarcely tell how it startled me.
She stood in the middle of the room with a face of
mildness bent upon me, and her look of forgiveness,
of absolution, maHeher angelic. It beautified her;
snewas younger; she was not a ridiculous old woman.
This trick of her expression, this magic of her spirit, 141


THE AS PERN PAPERS
transfigured her, and while I still noted it I heard a
whisper somewhere in the depths of my conscience:
"Why not, after all—why not?" It seemed to me I
could pay the price. Still more distinctly however than
the whisper I heard Miss Tina's own voice. I was so
struck with the different effect she made on me that at
first I wasn't clearly aware of what she was saying;
then I recognised she had bade me good-bye — she
said something about hoping I should be very happy.
"Good-bye — good-bye?" I repeated with an
inflexion interrogative and probably foolish.
I saw she didn't feel the interrogation, she only
heard the words: she had strung herself up to accept-
ing our separation and they fell upon her ear as a
proof. "Are you going to-day?" she asked. "But it
does n't matter, for whenever you go I shall not see
you again. I don't want to." And she smiled strangely,
with an infinite gentleness. She had never doubted
my having left her the day before in horror. How
could she, since I hadn't come back before night to
contradict, even as a simple form, even as an act of
common humanity, such an idea ?^Ajid_now she had
the force of soul — Miss Tina with force of snnl wac
,a new conception — to smile at me in her abjection."What shall you do — where shall you go?" f
asked.
"Oh I don't know. I've done the great thing. I
've destroyed the papers."
"Destroyed them ?" I wailed."Yes; what was I to keep them for? I burnt them
last night, one by one, in the kitchen.""One by one?" I coldly echoed it. 142"


THE AS PERN PAPERS
"It took a long time — there were so many." The
room seemed to go round me as she said this and a
real darkness for a moment descended on my eyes.
When it passed Miss Tina was there still, but the
transfiguration was over and she had changed back
to a plain dingy elderly person. It was in this charac-
ter she spoke as she said "I can't stay with you longer,
I can't"; and it was in this character she turned her
back upon me, as I had turned mine upon her twenty-four hours before, and moved to the door of her room.
Here she did what I hadn't done when I quitted her—she paused long enough to give me one look. I
have never forgotten it and I sometimes still suffer
from it, though it was not resentful. No, there was no
resentment, nothing hard or vindictive in poor Miss
Tina; for when, later, I sent her, as the price of the
portrait of Jeffrey Aspern, a larger sum of money than
I had hoped to be able to gather for her, writing to her
that I had sold the picture, she kept it with thanks;
she never sent it back. I wrote her that I had sold the
picture, but I admitted to Mrs. Prest at the time — I
met this other friend in London that autumn — that
it hangs above my writing-table. When I look at it I
can scarcely bear my loss — I mean of the precious
papers.





THE TURN OF THE SCREW





THE TURN OF THE SCREW
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently
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 happened to note it as
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; wak-
ing 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
shocked him. It was this observation that drew from
Douglas — not immediately, but later in the evening
— a reply that had the interesting consequence to
which I call attention. Some one else told a story not
particularly effective, which I saw he was not follow-
ing. This I took for a sign that he had himself some-
thing 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^jat so tender an age, adds a particular touch. But u" \'"'it's not the first occurrence of its charming kind that H7


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
I know to have been concerned with a child. If the
child giyes^the effect^iwth^ tun^of the screw, what
do you say to two children —?"
"~*We say of course," somebody exclaimed, "that
two children 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
this converser with his hands in his pockets. "No-
body but me, till now, has ever heard. It's quite
too horrible." This was naturally declared by sev-
eral 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.
He seemed to say it wasn't so simple as that; to be
really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand
over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. "For
dreadful — dreadfulness 1"
"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 preoccupied way, he explained. 148


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 ap-
peared 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 rea-
sons for a long silence. The others resented postpone-
ment, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. I
adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with
us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experi-
ence in question had been his own. To this his answer
was prpmpt. "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 beautiful
hand." He hung fire again. "A woman's. She has
been dead these tffientjLyears. 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 irrita-
tion. "She was a most charming person, but she was c '1 '*ten years older than I. She was my sister's governess," • \ • '■*""
he quietly said. "She was the most agreeable woman ^"vi 4 *I've ever known in her position; she'd have been
worthy of any whatever. 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 sum-
149


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
mer I was much there that year — it was a beautiful
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 any one. It wasn't simply
that she said so, but that I knew she hadn't. I was
sure; I could see. You '11 easily judge whv 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 without 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 morning?"
I said.
"Probably not till the second post."
"Well then; after dinner—"
"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 / will!" cried the ladies whose de-
150


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
parture had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however;
expressed the need for a little more light. "Who was Wvc^. 1it 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
literaTvulgar way."
"More's the pity then. That's the only way I ever understand."
"Won't you tell, Douglas?" somebody else en-
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 bewil-
dered. 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.
"Raison de plus — at that age! But it's rather nice,
his long reticence."
"Forty years!" Griffin put in.
"With this outbreak at last."
"The outbreak," I returned, "will make a tre-
mendous occasion of Thursday night"; and every one
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 apart151


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
ments; 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 wh|ch_our JKopjes^we^^Sed. 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 ap-
peared that the narrative he had promised to read us
really required for a proper intelligence a few words of
prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done
with it, that this narrative, from an exact transcript of
my own made 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"usjup. 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 


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
twenty, on taking service for the first time in the
schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to
answer in person an advertisement that had already
placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser.
This person proved, on her presenting herself for
judgement at a house in Harley Street that impressed
her as vast and imposing — this prospective patron
proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, t ''
such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream orl .•..:
an old novel, before a fluttered anxious girl out of a Hampshire 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 favour, an obligation he should gratefully
incur. She figured him as rich, but as fearfully ex-
travagant — saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of
good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways
with women. He had for his 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 his 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 — very heavy on his hands. It had all 
153


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 par-
ticular sent them down to his other house, the pro-
per 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 prac-
tically no other relations and that his own affairs
took up all his time. He had put them in possession
of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had
placed at the head of their little establishment—
but belowstairs only — an excellent woman, Mrs.
GlQse, whom he was sure his visitor would like and
whonad 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, with-
out children of her own, she was by good luck ex-
tremely 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 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 theyHhacTTiad thlTmisfor-
tune 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 (jlw >^.<J 154


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
alternative 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
some one put a question. "And what did the former
governess die of? Of so much respectability?"
Our friend's answer was prompt. "That will come
out. I don't anticipate."
"Pardon 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 completed
my thought. "She did wish to learn, and she did
learn. You shall hear to-morrow what she learnt.
Meanwhile of course the prospect struck her as
slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it
was a vision of serious duties and little company, of
really great loneliness. She hesitated — took a couple
of days to consult 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 seduction
exercised by the splendid young man. She suc-
curnbedjgjt."
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 155


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 succumbed. 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."
"Which was —?"
"That she should never trouble him — but never,
never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about
anything; only meet all questions herself , Teceive 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, disbur-
dened, 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 im-
mediately again left us, 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 another question. "What's your title?"
"I haven't one."
I56


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"Oh / have!" I said. But Douglas, without heed-
ing me, had begun to read with a fine clearness that
was like a rendering to the ear of the beauty of his
author's hand.


I
I remember the whole beginning as a succession 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 all my doubts bristle 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 conven-
ience, I was told, had been ordered, and I found,
toward the close of the June afternoon, a commod-
ious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a
lovely day, through a country the summer sweetness
of which served as a friendly welcome, my fortitude
revived and, as we turned into the avenue, took a
flight that was probably but a proof of the point to
which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had
dreaded, something so dreary that what greeted me
was a good surprise. I remember as a thoroughly
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 158


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil per-
son 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 a matter 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 affected me
on the spot as a creature too charming not to make
it a great fortune to have to do with her. She was the
most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I after-
wards wondered why my employer hadn't made
more of a point to me of this. I_s_le_p_t little that night
—wa? to° 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 figured full
draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time,
I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me—
like the wonderful appeal 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 one appear-
ance indeed that in this early outlook might have
made me shrink again was that of her being so in-
ordinatgly_glad to see me. I felt within half an hour
159


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
■
j. 'Wp>''i l^at s^ewas so 8^a^ — stout simple plain clean
wholesome woman — as to be positively un her
, guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it, and
that, with reflexion, with suspicion, might of course
have made me uneasy.
But it was a comfort that there could be no un-
easiness in a connexion with anything soKeatific^jas
the radiant imageof my little girl. the_vision ofwhose
ifipuc^^eauty had probably more than anything
else to do with the restlessness that, before morning,
made me several 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 stretches 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 recur-
rence 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 mak-
ing of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed
between us downstairs that after this first occasion
I should have her as a matter of course at night, her
small white bed being already arranged, to that end, 160


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 considera-
tion for my inevitable strangeness and her natural
timidity. 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 consciousness, with the deep
sweet serenity indeed of one offKaphael's Tioly in-.
fants) to be discussed, to 6e" imputed- toTher 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 between them over
bread and milk. There were naturally things that
in Flora's presence could pass between us only as
prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and round-
about allusions.
"And the little boy — does he look like her? Is he
too so very remarkable?"
One wouldn't, it was already conveyed between
us, too grossly flatter a child. "Oh Miss, most re-
markable. If you think well of this one!"— 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 no-
thing to check us.
"Yes; if I do —?"
"You will be carried away by the little gentle-
man!"
161


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"Well, that, I think, is what I came for —to be
carried away. I'm afraid, however," I remember
feeling the impulse to add, "I'm rather easily carried
away. I was carried away Jo JLonHon V*"
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 pretensions," I could laugh, "to
being the only one. My other pupil, at any rate, as
I understand, comes back to-morrow?"
"Not to-morrow — 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 wanted to know if the proper as well
as the pleasant and friendly thing wouldn't therefore
be that on the arrival of the public conveyance I
should await him with his little sister; a proposition
to which Mrs. Grose assented so heartily that I some-
how took her manner as a kind of comforting pledge
—never falsified, thank heaven! — that we should
on every question 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 162


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
myself, freshly, a little scared not less than a little
proud. Regular lessons, in this agitation, certainly
suffered some wrong; 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 childish talk about it and with the
result, in half an hour, of our becoming tremendous
friends. Young as she was I was struck, throughout
our little 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 Bly since the day
I left it, and I dare say that to my present older and
more informed eyes it would show a very reduced im-
portance. But as my little conductress, with her hair
of gold and her frock of blue^d^ncedjbefore meround
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 diversion of the
young idea, take all colour out of story-books and
fairy-tales. Wasn't it just a story-book 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-displaced
and half-utilised, in which I had the fancy of our
163


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
Tbeing almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a
great drifting ship. Well, I was strangely at the
helml


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, pre-
senting itself the second evening, had deeply discon-
certed me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I
have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind
up to a change of note. The postbag that evening —
it came late — contained a letter for me which, how-
ever, in the hand of my employer, I found to be com-
posed but of a few words enclosing another, ad-
dressed 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 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 distress; 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 —?"
165


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 cast about; then I judged best simply to hand
her my document — which, however, had the effect
of making her, without taking it, simply 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 opened
the 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 gentle-
men say so?"
"They go into no particulars. They simply ex-
press their regret that it should be impossible to keep
him. That can have but 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 r
There was such a flood of good faith in it that,
166


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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."
She was evidently grateful for such a profession.
"See him, Miss, first. Then believe it!" I felt forth-
with a new impatience to see him; it was the begin-
ning of a curiosity that, 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 minutes
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 extra-
ordinary detachment from disagreeable duties, look-
ing at 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 no-
thing 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
167


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
further occasion to approach my colleague, 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, holding 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 reflexion 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 an-
swer, "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 produced
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 way for the time to the appre-
hension of ridicule.
But the next day, as the hour for my drive ap-
proached, I cropped up in another place. "What
was the lady who was here before?"
168


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 did" Mrs. Grose assented: "it was the ($uv^ ^way he liked every one!" She had no sooner spoken {j^d J-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
him."
"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."
I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she
careful — particular?"
Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious.
"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."
169


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 nursemaid 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 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 fortunately not,
for my 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 of his arrival, 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
freshness, the same positive fragrance of. JlVjjty, m
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 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 Bly with him I remained merely bewildered — so
far, that is, as I was not outraged — by the sense of
the horrible letter locked up in one of the drawers of
my room. As soon as I could compass a private word 
171


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was gro-
tesque.
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 immediately added.
"In answer to the letter?" I had made up my
mind. "Nothing at all."
"And to his uncle?"
I was incisive. "Nothing at all."
"And to the boy himself?"
I was wonderful. "Nothing at all."
She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth.
"Then I'll stand by you. We'll see it out."
"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 creature 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 ac-
cepted. 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 con172


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
nexions of such an effort. I was lifted aloftjDn ajgreat
wave of infatuation and.pItyT I found it simple, in my
ignorance, my confusion and perhaps my conceit, to
assume that I could deal with a boy whose education
for the world was all on the point of beginning. 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. I learnt something_— at first cer-
tainly — that had not been one of the teachings ofmy
small smothered life; Tearrit: 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 \ cv~ww^air and freedom, all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was consideration^
— and consideration was sweet. Oh it was a trap —
not designed but deep — to my imagination, to my
delicacy, perhaps to my vanity; 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 discon-
nectedness —as to how the rough future (for all fu-
tures 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 every-
thing, to be right, would have to be fenced about and
ordered and arranged, the only form that in my
fancy the after-years could take for them was that of 173


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and
the park. It may be of course above all that what sud-
denly broke into this gives the previous time a charm
of stillness — 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 retire-
ment a small interval alone. Much as I liked my com-
panions 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 flattered me, the beauty and dignity
of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to
feel myself tranquil and justified; doubtless perhaps
also to reflect that by my discretion, my quiet good
sense and general high propriety. Ijvas giving pleas-
ure—-if he ever thought of it!— to the person to whose pressure I had yielded. 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 daresay I fancied myself
in short a remarkable young woman and took com-
fort in the faith that this would more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the
remarkable things that presently gave their first sign.
It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my
174


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 k , i<with me in these wanderings was that it would be as
charming as a charming story suddenly to meet some^^' v \ l'u
one. . Some one would appear there at the turn of aO*^'?
path and would stand before me and smile and ap-^"^'** ^prove. I didn't ask more than that — I only asked y
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 "^j^^
which I mean the face was — when, on the first of
these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I
stopped short on emerging from one of the planta-
tions and coming into view of the house. What
arrested 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,, rnrnet} real. He did stand there ! — but high 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 JVv.VM« i '<was one of a pair — square incongruous crenellated .tr«
structures"— that were distinguished, for some rea- <i u ''son, though Tcould see little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house
and were probably architectural absurdities, re-
deemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly dis-
engaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in
their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival
that was already a respectable past. I admired them,
had fancies about them, for we could all profit in a
degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, 175


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 twilight,
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
notj^e^jisoa.lJxad" precipitately, supposed. There
came to me thus a bewilderment of vision of which,
after these 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 privately
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 moreover, 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 unspeakable 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 176


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
definite as a picture in a frame. That's how I thought,
with extraordinary quickness, of each person he might
have been and that he wasn't. We were confronted
across our distance quite long enough for me to ask
myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, as
an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few
seconds more became intense.
The great question, or one of these, is afterwards, 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 of how my office seemed
to require 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 free-
dom, as I remember^jn^the' sign of familiarity of Tiis
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~waT"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
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, 177


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
looking at me hard all the while, to the opposite corner
of the platform. Yes, it was intense to me 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,
moved from one of the crenellations 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, since I was as deeply rooted as shaken. Was f« ^there a "secret" at Bly—a mystery of Udolpho or an ^ ^ VV.A.insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected C v° *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
singular 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 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 sus-
pected in advance that her comfortable face would
pull me up, and I somehow measured the importance 179


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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
sparing my companion. On the spot, accordingly, in
the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a rea-
son 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 wasn't 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
me little time to see that I might easily sound, without
forms of enquiry 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 atten-
tion, that I had not been practised upon by the serv-
ants nor made the object of any "game." Of what-
ever it was that I knew nothing was known around me.
There was but one sane inference: some one had taken a liberty rather monstrous. That was what, repeatedly, 180


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
I dipped into my room and locked the door to say to
myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intru-
sion; some unscrupulous 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.
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 charming work. My
charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora,
and through nothing could I so like it as through
feeling that to throw myself into it was to throw myself
out of my 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 hadjb_egun
by entertaining for the probable ^ey_pxose of_my_
ofnce7"There was to be no grey prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that
presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the ro-
mance of the nursery and the poetry of the school-
room. I don't mean by this of course that we studied
only fiction and verse; I mean that I can express no
otherwise the sort of interest my companions inspired.
How can I describe that except by saying that instead
of growing deadly 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 direc-
tion, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped:
deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the 181


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
boy's conduct at school. It had been promptly given
me, I have noted, to face that mystery 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
hisrinnocencg); 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
individual differences, such superiorities of quality,
always, on the part of the majority — which could
include even stupid sordid head-masters — turns
infallibly 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 unpunishable. They were like those
( cheriibs^ of the anecdote who had — morally at any
rate — nothing to whack! I remember feeling with
Miles in especial as if he had ha37 as'u'weTejJnothing
to call even an infinitesimal history. We expect of a
small child scant enough "antecedents," but there
was in thisHbeautiful little boy something extraordin-
arily sensitive, yet extraordinarily 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 suffered. Ttook this as a direct disproof of his
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,
should have felt the wound and the dishonour 1 could
reconstitute nothing at all, and he was therefore an
182


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
angelT)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 this joy of my children
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 evening show improvement, we would
attend together 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 downstairs to
meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered 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 recognise, on a chair
near the wide window, then closed, the articles I 183


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 instant-
aneous; 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. His face was close to the glass,
yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, just
to show me how intense the former had been. He
remained but a few seconds — long enough to con-
vince me he also saw and recognised; but it wasjasjf
'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 dur-
ing 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. He had come for some one else.
The flash of this knowledge — for it was knowledge
in the midst of dread — produced in me the most
extraordinary effect, starting, as I stood there, a sud-
den vibration of duty and courage. I say courage
because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I 184


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
bounded straight out of the door again, reached that of
the house, got in an instant upon the drive and, pass-
ing 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,
almost dropped, with the real relief 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 to-day 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 Lremember the clear assuranrp T fefc tbatjn* ^ ^vOV^
nrmp r»f fhem concealed him. He was there or was not^^^.^ .
there: not there if I didn't see him. I got hold of this; U V\~"then, instinctively, instead of returning as I had come,
went to the window. It was confusedly present to me e ~»1 ■' ^'"that I ought to place myself wKerelie 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 ask
myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in
short, and retreated just on my lines, and I knew she
had then passed out and come round to me and that I 185


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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.


V 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 matter — i" 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 degree of 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?"
"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 settled that she must share! "Just
what you saw from the dining-room a minute ago 187


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
was the effect of that. What I 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^ld^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 —"
Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge.
"Ah I have n'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?"
188


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 is 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 and then, pulling herself
together, turned to me with full inconsequence. "It's
time we should be at church."
"Oh I'm not fit for church!"
"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 conscious-
ness 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."
189


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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?"
"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?" In-
stead of answering she came nearer to the window
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've my duty."
"So have I mine," she replied; after which she
added: "What's he like?"
"I 'vebeen dying to tell you. But he's like nobody."
"Nobody?" she echoed.
mm mi J
l^lHe 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 pale face,
long in shape, with straight good features and little
rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His
eyebrows are somehow darker; they look particularly 190


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 j /mPless, at least, than Mrs. Grose at that moment.
"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's
tall, active, erect," I continued, "but never — no,
never 1^—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 hand-
some?"
I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!"
"And dressed —?"
"In somebody's clothes. They're smart, but
they're not his own.il
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 to-
gether. "He never wore his hat, but he did wear —191


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 her-
self more firmly to express the wonder of it. "Yes.
Mr. Quint's 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 im-
pressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my
companion's knowledge henceforth — a knowledge
half consternation and half compassion — of that
liability. There had been this evening, after the
revelation that left me for an hour so prostrate—
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 chal-
lenges 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 nobody in the house but the governess
was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted with-
out directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave
it to her, arid endear"by showing me on this ground
an awestricken tenderness, a deference to my more
than questionable privilege, of which the very breath
has remained with me as that of the sweetest of hu-
man charities.
What was settled between us accordingly that
night was that we thought we might bear things to193


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
gether; 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 comrade was prepared for to keep terms
with so stiff an agreement. I was queer company
enough — quite as queer as the company rreceived;
1jfif"a§"i"iiace ovei 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. 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 some one else, you say—
some one who waTnot "youT"
"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous
clearness now possessed me. "That's whom he was
looking for."
"But how do you know?"
"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grewTjAnd you know, my dear!"
She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even
so much telling as that. She took it up again in a
moment. "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
194


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
to them." That he might was an awful conception,
and yet somehow I could keep it at bay; which more-
over, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in
practically proving. I had an absolute certainty that
I should see again what! had already seen, but some-
thing^ withTn me said that by offering myself bravely
^as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting,
by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as
an expiatory victim and guarcTthe tranquillity of the
jest of the household. 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 men-
tioned —!"
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
preTence,""his history, in any way. They've never
alluded to it."_
^"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 reference. And you tell me
they were 'great friends.'"
it wasn't him J" Mrs. Grose with emphasis 195


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
declared. "^wasCj^uint/s own fancy. To play with
him, I mean — to^poifnim.'* 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 disgust. "Too
free with my boy?"
"Too free with every one!"
I forbore for the moment to analyse this descrip-
tion further than by the reflexion 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 discomfort-
a"Ble legend^ ho perturbation of scullions,.had ever,
within any one's memory, attached to the J^ni^d
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 midnight,
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. / knew it—but the master
didn't."
"And you never told him?"
"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing — he hated
complaints. He was terribly short with anything 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 partic196


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
ular perhaps about some of the company he himself
kept. All the same, I pressed my informant. "I
promise you / would have told!"
She felt my discrimination. "I daresay 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 I probably showed.
"You were n'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
you'r chargeT' ~* ■
"No, they weren't in mine!" she roundly and
distressfully returned. "The master believed in him
and placed him here because he was supposed not to
be quite in health and the country air so good for
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 could n'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 passion-
ately, for a week, we came back together to the sub-
ject! 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 something she had not told me. 197


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word
Mrs. Grose had kept back. I was sure moreover by
morning that this was not from a failure of frankness,
but because on every side there were fears. It seems
to me indeed, in raking it all over, that by the time
the morrow's sun was high I had restlessly read into
the facts before us almost all the meaning they were
to receive from subsequent and more cruel occur-
rences. What they gave me above all was just the
sinister figure of the living man — the dead one
would keep a while! — and of the months he had
continuously passed at Bly, which, added up, made
a formidable stretch. The 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 every-
thing; but there had been matters in his life, strange
passages and perils, secret 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 
198


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion de-
manded of me. I now saw that I had been asked for
a service admirable and difficult; and there would
be a greatness in letting it be seen — oh in the right
quarter!— that I could succeed where many an-
other girl might have failed. It was an immense help
to me — I confess I rather applaud myself as I look
back 1 — that I saw my response so strongly and so
simply. I was there to protect and defend the little
creatures in the world the most bereaved and the
most loveable, the appeal of whose helplessness had
suddenly become only too explicit, a deep constant
ache of one's own engaged affection. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger.
They had nothing but me, and I — well, I had them.
It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance
presented 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 disgulse3ptenslbn,7that'
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 another matter altogether.
It didn't last as suspense — it was superseded by
horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes — from the mo-
ment 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 window-seat; he had wished
to finish a book, and I had been glad to encourage a
purpose so laudable in a young man whose only 199


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
defect was a certain ingenuity of restlessness. 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 excep-
tionally 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 accom-
pany me without appearing to oppress. They were
never importunate and yet never listless. My atten-
tion to them all really went to seeing them amuse
themselves immensely without me: this was aspectacle they seemed actively to prepare ancTtKat em-
ployed 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 superior, 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 on
the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately: Begun
geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof.
Suddenly, amid these elements, 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 strangest 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 200


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
could sit — on the old stone bench which overlooked
the pond; and in this position I began to take in with
certitude and yet without direct vision the presence,
a good way off, 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 leasTuTtKe conviction I from one moment
to another found myself forming as to whatT should
see straight before me and across the lake as a conge-
quenge.,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 to do. There was
an alien object in view —a figure whose right of pre-
sence I instantly and passionately questioned. I recol-
lect counting over perfectly the possibilities, remind-
ing 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 tradesman'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 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 trans-
ferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the 201


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 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
spontaneous sounds from her had 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 lookethat
her^— looked with the confirmed conviction that we
were still, together, under direct personal notice. She
had picked up a small flat piece of wood which hap-
pened to have in it a little hole that had evidently sug-
gested 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 sus-
tained 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 incredulity as
she held me.
"Why all that we know — and heaven knows what
more besides!" Then as she released me I made it
out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full
coherency even to myself. ^Xwojiours ago, in the
garden " — I could scarce articulate — " 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.
Mrs. Grose of" cotrrse could only gape the wider.
"Then how do you know?"
"I was there — I saw with my eyes: saw 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 reflexion
of them in my companion's face. "Another person—
this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakeable hor-
ror and evil: a woman in black/pale^nd dreadful —
203 CM*'
If 1


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 appeared
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 some one you've never seen?" stu.
"Never. But some one the child has. Someone" ™
you haveT^Then to show how I had thought it all
outT^My predecessor — the one who died."
"Miss Jessel?"
"Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed.
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 instinctively 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!"
204


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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."
"Why, it's that the child may keep it up — and
that the child assuredly will — without my knowing
it."
At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a
moment collapsed, yet presently to pull herself
together again as 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!"
"Like such things — a scrap of an infant!"
"Isn't it just a proof of her blest innocence?"
my friend bravely enquired.
She brought me, for the instant, almost round.
"_Oh we must clutch at that — we must clingjto it]
Ifjit^is n t a proof of what you say, it's a proof of—
God knows what! For the woman's a horror of hor-t
rors."
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 re-
peated.
"Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.""At you, do you mean — so wickedly?"
205


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"Dear me, no — I could have borne that. 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^t^rnTHiT'aT'ir 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
kjnd ofJuiry^TTHteTiiuoli.'"
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 statement. "That's what Flora
knows."
After a little she turned round. "The person 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 vis-
ibly weighed this. "Oh handsome — very, very," I
insisted; "wonderfully handsome. But infamous."
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 together; and
I found absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now 206


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
so straight. "I appreciate," I said, "the great de-
cency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time
has certainly 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 be-
tween 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 an acceptance of my
companion's own measure of my predecessor's abase-
ment. 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, depraved. "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 ifnow in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel
had again appeared. I seemed at any rate for an
instant to trace their evocation of her as distinctly
as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out 207


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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!"
"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 / do," I replied; on which
I must have shown her — as I was indeed but too con-
scious — a front of miserable defeat. It brought out
again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed
touch of her kindness 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, where 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 extravagant fancies. We were to keep our heads if
we shouldkeep nothing else — difficult indeed as that
might be in the face of all that, in our prodigious ex-
perience, seemed 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
bemg beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had
seen. I found that to keep her thoroughly in the grip
of this 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 de-
tail, their special marks — a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognised and named
them. She wished, of course — small blame to her! —
to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure
her that my own interest in it had now violently taken
the form of a search for the way to escape from it. I
closed with her cordially on the article of the likeli-
hood that with recurrence — for recurrence we took
for granted — I should get used to my danger; dis-
tinctly professing that my personal exposure had sud-
denly become the least of my discomforts. It was my 209


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 recognised as a resource I could
positively cultivate and which had never failed me yet.
I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into
Flora's special society 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 sup-
posed the ugly signs of it brushed away; but I could
literally — for the time at all events — rejoice, under
this fathomless charity, that they had not entirely dis-
appeared. 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
preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure
my judgement 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 our small friends'
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 incapacity 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 
210


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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
must have been for both parties a matter of habit.
It was a pity I should have had to quaver out again
the reasons for my not having, 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 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 I needed to
recapitulate the portentous little activities 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 invita-
tion to romp.
Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was no-
thing in it, in this review, I should have missed the
two or three dim elements of comfort that still
remained to me. I should n't for instance have been
able to asseverate to my friend that I was certain—
which was so much to the good — that / at least had
not betrayed myself. I shouldn't have been prompted,
by stress of need, by desperation of mind — I scarce
know what to call it — to invoke such further aid tc
intelligence as might spring from pushing my col-
league 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 con211


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
centration alike of our danger and our watch seemed
to help — I felt the importance of giving the last jerk
to the curtain. "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
did n't pretend for him he had n't literally ever been
'bad'? He has not, truly, 'ever,' in these weeks that
I myself have lived with him and so closely watched
him; he has been an imperturbable 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 personal
observation of him did you refer?"
It was a straight question enough, but levity was
not our note, and in any case I had before the grey
dawn admonished us to separate got my answer.
What my friend had had in mind proved immensely
to the purpose. It was neither more nor less than the
particular fact that for a period of several months
Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It
was indeed the very appropriate item of evidence of
her having 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 would take her. Miss Jessel had, with a very
high manner about it, requested her to mind her
212


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 gentle-
men not forget their station.
I pressed again, of course, the closer for that.
"You reminded 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 would n't!" she
could still impress on me. "I was sure, at any rate,"
she added, "that he did n'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."
"He then prevaricated about it — he said he
had n'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 sugges-
tion that it did n't matter; which indeed she backed
up by a further remark. "You see, after all, Miss
Jessel did n't mind. She did n't forbid him."
I considered. "Did he put that to you as a justi-
fication?"
At this she dropped again. "No, he never spoke
of it."
213


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"Never mentioned her in connexion 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! 'ISgjhajjcau..could
see he knewwhat was between the two wretches?"
"I don't know — I don't know!" the poor woman
wailed.
"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only
vou have n'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 in silence, most of
all made you miserable. But I shall get it out of you
yet! There was something in the boy that suggested
to you," I continued, "his covering and concealing
their relation."
"Oh he could n't prevent—"
"Your learning the truth? I dare say! But, heav-
ens," I fell, with vehemence, a-thinking, "what it
shows that they must, to that extent, have succeeded in making of him V*"
"Ah nothing that's not nice now!" Mrs. Grose
lugubriously pleaded.
"I don't wonder you looked queer," I persisted,
"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, though I shall not be able to 214


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 n't for the present let my-
self go." Meanwhile I returned to her first example —
the one to 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 an-
other." Again her admission was so adequate that I
continued: "And you forgave him that?"
"Would n't you?"
"Oh yes!" And we exchanged there, in the still-
ness, 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 particular deadly view I
was in the very act of forbidding myself to entertain.
But I so far succeeded 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 engaging 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, 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 pointing 215


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
out to my own tenderness any way to do. This was
marked when, at the schoolroorndoor, she quitted me.
"Surely you don't accuse him—"
"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals
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 took as they
elapsed 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 extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could
actively promote in myself, and it may be imagined if
I neglected now to apply at this source for whatever
balm it would yield. Stranger than I can express, cer-
tainly, was the effort to struggle against my new lights.
It would doubtless have been a greater tension still,
however, 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 should
see that they were so immensely more interesting. Put-
ting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation
I so often d\S, anyjclouding of their innocence could
only be— blameless and foredoomed as they were,—
a reason the more for taking risks. There were mo-
ments when I knew myself to catch them up by an
irresistible impulse and press them to my heart. As
soon as I had done so I used to wonder — "What
will they think of that? Does n't it betray too much?" 217


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 I could still enjoy was that
the immediate charm of my companions was a be-
guilement 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 asking if I might n't see a queerness in the
traceable increase of their own demonstrations.'""
"They were at this period extravagantly and preter-
naturally fond of me; which, after all, I could reflect,
was no more than a graceful response in children per-
petually bowed down over and hugged. The homage
of which they were so lavish succeeded 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 naturally
what would please her most — in the way of diverting,
entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages,
telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out
at her, in disguises, as animals and historical charac-
ters, and above all astonishing 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 I in these days overscored their full hours.
They had shown me from the first a facility for every-
thing, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, 218


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
achieved remarkable flights. They got their little
tasks as if they loved them; they indulged, from the
mere exuberance of the gift, in the most unimposed
little miracles of memory. TJhej^not only pjBEBSjLoitt
at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans,
astronomers and navigators. This was so singularly
the case that it had presumably much to do with the
fact as to which, at the present day, I am at a loss for
a different explanation : I allude to my unnatural com-
posure on the subject of another school for Miles.
What I remember is that I was content for the time
not 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 gov-
erness, 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 impressoin I might
"have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was
under some influence operating in his small intellect-
ual life as a tremendous incitement.
TTTt 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 without 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 affection and
success and private theatricals. The musical sense in
each of the children was of the quickest, but the elder
in especial had a marvellous knack of catching and
repeating. The schoolroom piano broke into all grue-
some fancies; and when that failed there were con-
219


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
fabulations 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 eith"er quarrelled of com-plained is to make the note of praise coarse for tfieTr
jguality of sweetness. Sometimes perhaps indeed
(when I dropped into coarseness) I 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 diplo-
macy; 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
horrid plunge. In going on with the record of what
was hideous at Bly 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 dreadful way through it to the end.
There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look
back, the business seems to me to have been all pure
suffering; but I have at least reached the heart of it,
and the straightest road out is doubtless to advance.
One evening — with nothing to lead up or 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 prob220


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
ably have made little of in memory had my subse-
quent 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 depre-
cated renown, but never to so much as that of a stray
specimen, had reached the sequestered home and ap-
pealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I
remember that the book I had in my hand was Field-
ing'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
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 undefinably
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 any one 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, hold221


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
ing my candle high, till I came within sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the stair-
case. At this point I precipitately 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 knew that there was a figure on the
stair. I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse
of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounterwith
Quint. The apparition had reached the landinghalfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the win-
dow, 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 common intensity.
HeTwas absolutely, on this occasion, a living detest-
able dangerous presence. But that was not the won-
der of wonders; I reserve this distinction for quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread had
unmistakeably quitted me and that there was nothing
in me unable to 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 n't — I found myself at the end of an in-
stant 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, 222


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
accordingly, the thing was as■human and hideous as a
real interview: hideous 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 pro-
longed that it would have taken but little more to
make me doubt if even / were in life. Ijcan't express
what followed it save by saying that the silenceTtielf
— 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 villainous back that no hunch could
have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and
into the darkness in which the next bend was lost.


X
I remained a while 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 curtains
had been deceivingly pulled forward; then my step, to
my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound:
I noticed 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 night-gown, with her pink bare feet
and the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely
grave, and I had never had such a sense of losing an
■.hu i*'advantage acquired (the thrill of which had just been
so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she ad-
dressed me with a reproach — "You naughty: where
have you been?" Instead of challenging her own irreg-
ularity I found myself arraigned and explaining. She
herself 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 224


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 in-
stant, 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 some one was" — she
never blanched as she smiled out that at me.
Oh how I looked at her now!"And did you see
any one?"
"Ah no!" she returned almost (with the full priv-
ilege of childish inconsequence) resentfully, though
with a long sweetness in her little drawl of the nega-
tive.
At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I abso-
lutely believed she lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the three or four pos-
sible ways in which I might take this up. One of these
for a moment tempted me with such singular force
that, to resist it, I must have gripped my little girl
with a spasm that, wonderfully, she submitted to with-
out 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 225


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our
fate, where we are and what it means?" This solicita-
tion dropped, alas, as it came: if I could immediately
have succumbed to it I might have spared myself —
well, you '11 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?"
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 answered, "that you might come
back, you dear, and that you have!" And after a little,
when she had got into bed, I had, a long time, by al-
most sitting on her for the retention of her hand, to
show how 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 moments when my
room-mate unmistakeably slept, and, stealing out,
took noiseless turns in the passage. I 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, nevertheless, a different
adventure. Looking down it from the top I once re-
cognised the presence of a woman seated on one of 226


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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, for all that, 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 the same
nerve for going up that I had lately shown Quint.
Well, there continued to be plenty of call 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 in-
deed, from the particular quality of its unexpected-
ness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was pre-
cisely the first night during this series that, weary with
vigils, I had conceived I might again without laxity
lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately
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 shaken me. I had left a light
burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant cer-
tainty that Flora had extinguished it. This brought
me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, to her
bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the win-
dow enlightened me further, and the striking of a
match completed the picture.
The child had again got up — this time blowing
out the taper, and had again, for some purpose of ob-
servation 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 227


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
disturbed neither by my re-illumination nor by the
haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap.
Hidden, protected, absorbed, she evidently 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 disturbing her, to reach, from
the corridor, some other window turned to 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 I had my eyes on her brother's door, which
was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, pro-
duced in me a renewal of the strange impulse 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 boyish bewilderment a revelation of
my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mys-
tery the long halter of my boldness?
This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross
to his threshold and pause again. I preternaturally
listened; I figured to myself what might portentously
be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he
also secretly at watch. It was a deep soundless min-
ute, 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 wasn't the visitor most con228


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
cerned 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 enough at Bly, 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 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 extravagant size of
which made it so inconvenient that it had not for
years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplar). 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 in all quietness one of the shutters. Achieving
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 direction. Then I saw some-
thing 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 ap-
peared — 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 3^ \ f" *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 presence 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: 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 the
least of 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 strain alone. But she was a magnificent monument to the blessin£oFa~wan"t oT imagination, ancTrf
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 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
230


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
young things could, after all, look out for themselves;
she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case
presented by their deputy-guardian. That, for my-
self, 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 worry
to find myself anxious about hers.
At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, un-
der 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 and at a distance,
yet within call if we wished, the children strolled to
and fro in one of their most manageable moods. They
moved 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 accom-
plishments and my function — in her patience 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, 231


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
at the window, with a concentrated need of not alarm-
ing the house, rather that method than any noisier
process. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of
my small hope of representing with success even to
her actual sympathy my sense of the real splendour
of the little inspiration with which, after I had got him
into the house, the boy met my final articulate chal-
lenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the
terrace he had come to me as straight as possible; 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 hovered 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 wondered! —
if he were groping about in his dreadful little mind for
something plausible and not too grotesque. It would
tax his invention certainly, and I felt, this time, over
his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph.
It was a sharp trap for any game hitherto successful.
He could play no longer at perfect propriety, nor could
he pretend to it; so how the deuce would he get out
of the scrape? There beat in me indeed, with the pas-
sionate 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
bed had not been slept in at all and the window, un-
covered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that
there was no need of striking a match — I remember 232


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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
"feeJ.ikejL.with a^ ms 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 ab-
solve 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 ele-
ment 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, during our short stiff
brush there in the dark, he fairly shook me with ad-
miration. I was of course thoroughly kind and mer-
ciful; never, never yet had I placed on his small shoul-
ders 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.
"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 clear 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 answering only
with a vague repeated grimacing nod. He was gen-
tleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he
stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was 233


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 every-
thing. 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 my 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 should 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!"
234


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 incident and our interview
closed on my recognition of all the reserves of good-
ness 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 successfully pre-
sentable to Mrs. Grose, though I re-enforced 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 mat-
ter. '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'd 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
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 to them.
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 236


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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, passing
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 pas-
sion, she covered them still with her eyes. "Of what
other things have you got hold?"
"Why of the very things that have delighted, fas-
cinated 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!"
"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 to-
gether. "They haven't been good — they've only
been absent. It has been easy to live with them be-
cause 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?"
"Eox.the. love of all the evH that^injhose_dieadful
days, the pair put into them. And to plyjtarn_ with
that evil still, to keep up the work of demons, is what
brings the others back."
237


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"Laws!" said my friend under her breath. The
exclamation was homely, but it revealed a real accept-
ance 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 justi-
fication for me as the plain assent of her experience to
whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our
brace of 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 pur-
sued.
"Do?" I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as
they passed at their distance, paused an instant in their
walk and looked at us. "Don't they do enough?"
I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, hav-
ing smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us,
resumed their exhibition. We were held by it a
minute; then I answered: "They can destroy them!"
At this my companion did turn, but the appeal 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 outside of windows, the further edge of
pools; but there's a deep design, on either side, to
shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle: so
the success of the tempters is only a question of time.
They've only to keep to their suggestions of dan^..
ger."
"For the children to come?""And perish in the attempt!" Mrs. Grose slowly
238


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
got up, and I scrupulously added: "Unless, 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 person enjoying his confid-
ence and 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."
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 239


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 atten-
tion 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?"
L"I would leave, on the spot, both him and you."


XIII
It was all very well to join them, but speaking to 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 irfloic consciousness on the part ofmy pupils. It
was not, I am as sure to-day as I was sure then, my
mereInfernaTTmagThatibnj it was absolutelytraceable
that they were aware ofjnypredjcament and that this
strange relation made, in a manner, for a longtime,
the air in which we moved. I don't mean that they
had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vul-
gar, for that was not one of their dangers: I do mean,
on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed
and untouched became^tetweeri us, greater than any
other, and that so much avoidance couldn't have
been made successful without a great deal of tacit
arrangement. 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 241


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
of conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden
ground was the question of the return of the dead in
general and of whatever, in especial, might survive,
for 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 '11 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 every-
thing that had ever happened to me, had had, with
every circumstance, the story of my smallest adven-
tures and of those of my brothers and sisters and of
the cat and the dog at home, as well as many par-
ticulars of the whimsical bent of my father, of the
furniture and arrangement of our house and of the
conversation of the old women of our village. There
were things enough, taking one with another, to chat-
ter 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 occa-
sions 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 anything 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 connexion — to repeat afresh Goody Gosling's 242


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
celebrated mot or to confirm the details already sup-
plied 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 predicament, as I have called it,
grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for
me without another encounter ought, it would have
appeared, to have done something toward soothing
my nerves. Since the light brush, that second night
on the upper landing, of the presence 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 appear-
ance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, the
summer had gone; the~autumn had dropped upon
Bly 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, con-
ditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable impres-
sions 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, the spot. But they remained
unaccompanied and empty, and I continued un
243


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
molested; if unmolested one could call a young wo-
man whose sensibility 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 saying —
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 definitely proved — I greatly
preferred, as a safeguard, the fulness of my own ex-
posure. 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 ap-
peared, 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 conviction of the secret of my pupils.
How can I retrace to-day the strange steps of my
obsession? There were times of our being together
when I would have been ready to swear that, liter-
ally, in my 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 exaltation
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 244


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
their tenderness, just in the crystal depths of which
— like the flash of a fish in a stream — the mockery
of their advantage peeped up. The shock had in truth
sunk into me still deeper than I knew on the night
when, looking out either for Quint or for Miss Jessel
under the stars, I had seen there the boy over whose
rest I watched and who had immediately brought in
with him— had straightway there turned on me —
the lovely upward look with which, from the battlements above us, 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 essentially in the scared state that I drew
my acn^ condtrsTOrrs. They harassed me so that
sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly
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 some-
thing infamous if by pronouncing them I should vio-
late 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 covered my face with my hands.
After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever,
going on volubly enough till one of our prodigious
palpable hushes occurred— I can call them nothing
else — the strange dizzy lift or swim (I try for terms!) 245


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had nothing to
do with the more or less noise we at the moment
might be engaged in making and that I could hear
through any intensified mirth 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 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 least possible to get rid of was the cruel
idea that, whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw
more — things terrible and unguessable and that
sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the
past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for
the time, a chill that we vociferously denied we felt;
and we had all three, with repetition, got into such
splendid training that we went, each time, to mark
the close of the incident, almost automatically through
the verysame movements. Itwas strikingof thechild-
ren at all events to kiss me inveterately with a 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 enquiry, 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 our circle. It was impossible to
have given less encouragement than he had admin246


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
istered 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 myself; 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. So I held
that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to
appeal to him when I let our young friends understand
that their own letters were but charming literary ex-
ercises. 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 our
young friends 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 feel, since I didn't in these days hate them!
Would exasperation, 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.


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 hap-
pened at such a moment to be particularly and very
gratefully struck with the obedience of my little
charges. Why did they never resent my inexorable,
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 com-
panions 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 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 unmistakeably occurred. I 248


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 I recognised it, though to
enable me to do so he had no need 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
inconclusive 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 beautiful face
with which he watched me how ugly and queer I
249


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
^lookejj. "And always with the same lady?" I re-
turned.
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? who's — well, getting on."
I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly.
"Yes, you're getting on." Oh but I felt helpless!
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 awfully 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 extra-
vagance of childish reproach. "Why it was just to
show you I could!"
"Oh yes—you could."
"And I can again."
I felt 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?"
250


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 any-
where!"
"Well then," I quavered, "if you're just as happy
here—1"
"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 professed.
"But it isn't so much that."
"What is it then?"
"Well — I want to see more life."
"I see; I see.'^"WeTiad aFrived 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 he
would have for more than an hour 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—ca v\ V AV
which I might bend my knees. I seemed literally to be W^Vm O^.H Vvcrunning a race with some confusion to which he was )<wA c> <p - •about to reduce me, but I felt he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw I
out —
"I want my own sort!"
It literally made me bound forward. "There aren't
many of your own sort, Miles!" I laughed. "Unless
perhaps dear little Flora!"
■ •
. 251


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"You really compare me to a baby girl?"
This found me singularly weak. "Don't you then
love our sweet Flora?"
"If I did n't — and you too; if I didn't —!" he
repeated as if retreating for a jump, yet leaving his
thought so unfinished that, after we had come into the
gate, another stop, which he imposed 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 did n't —?"
He looked, while I waited, about at the graves.
"Well, you know what!" But he did n'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?"
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 recognised quickly enough that I could make, to
this enquiry, no answer that wouldn't involve some-
thing of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it struck me
that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently 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?"
252


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"In what way?" "Why by his coming down.""But who '11 get him tc come down?""/ will!" the boy said with extraordinary bright-
ness 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 n"r ynilng, fr'^tld.ht|l^, ^lid JKLFT thfi
jTuIness of jt|i.nie^ujing > 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 gage of it for him
would be just this awkward collapse. Hehadgot out
of me that there was something I was much afraid of, and that he should probably be able to make use gf

ay fear to gain, for his own .$}l%^^8)Q&Jj^$£>m.
My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable
question of the grounds of his dismissal from school,
since that was really but the question of the horrors
gathered 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 discompqsure,.wjj_iiHtmensely in the right, was in a position to say to me:
"Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of
this interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect"
254


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 revelation of a
consciousness and a plan.
That was what really overcame me, what prevented
my going in. I walked round the church, hesitating,
hovering; I reflected that I had already, 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 mute 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 with an impulse
that might master me, I felt, and completely, should I
give it the least encouragement. I might easily put an
end to my ordeal 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 bolt. It
was only a question of hurrying again, for a few pre-
parations, to the house which the attendance at church
of so many of the servants 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 should get away only till dinner? Thatwould
be in a couple of hours, at the end of which — I had
the acute prevision—my little pupils would play at in-
nocent 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 255 .


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 con-
cerned, away; I came straight out of the 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 to cynical flight. The
Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the
interior, in which I met no one, fairly stirred 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 quickness 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
> .v<;step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was
exactly where, more than a month before, in the dark-
ness ofnight and just so bowjd.wilL^ihiogs, Ihad
seen the spectre of the most horrible of women, "7it
this I was able to straighten myself; I went the rest
of the way up; I made, in my turmoil, for the school-
room, 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 unsealed. In the presence
of what I saw I reeled straight back upon resistance.
Seated at my own table in the clear noonday light I
saw a person whom, without my previous experience,
I should have taken at the first blush for some house256


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
maid 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 entrance,
her attitude strangely persisted. Then it was — with
the very act of its announcing itself— that her iden-
tity 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 pre-
decessor. Dishonoured and tragic. she_was all before
me; but even "asT fixed and, for memory, secured it,
the awful image passed away. Dark as midnight in
her black dress, her haggard beauty and her unutter-
able 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 in-
deed I ha_d tfrg gvtranr^jjnary chill of a feeling thai.it
was I who 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 the sense that I
must stay.


XVI
I had so perfectly expected the return of the others to
be marked by a demonstration that I was freshly up-
set at having to find them merely dumb and discreet
about my desertion. Instead of gaily denouncing and
caressing 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 purpose 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 house-
keeper'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 be-
fore the fire. So I see her still, so I see her best: facing
the flame from her straight chair in the dusky shining
room, a large clean picture 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've a couple!" I laughed. "But did the
children give you a reason?"
258


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they
said you'd 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;-
"AIT out?" My companion stared. "But what,
Miss r
"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 weiriiThandTn advance of my sound-
ing that note; so that even now, as she bravely blinked
under the signal of my word, I could keep her com-
paratively 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?"
259


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 imagnajtionPkept me
up. "To share them —?"
"She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave
it to~her, fairly have fallen away from me 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 to sending for theirjincle.""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 thatjf 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 be-
fore 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.
260


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably,
"that I can't undertake to work the question on be-
half 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 returned.
I was silent a while; we looked at each other.
"Then what am I to tell him?"
"You needn't tell him anything. I'll tell him."
I measured this. "Do you mean you '11 write —?"
Remembering she couldn't, I caught myself up.
"How do you communicate?"
"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 in-
consequently break down. The tears were again in
her eyes. "Ah Miss, you write!"
"Well — to-night," I at last returned; 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
candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute at
Miles's door. What, under my endless obsession, 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 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."
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 cavalry!" 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,
262


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 busi-
ness 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 felt as I
held his hand and our eyes continued to meet that
my silence had all the air of admitting his charge and
that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps
at that moment so Tabulbus ^"ouTactial^ 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 child-
ren's hospital; and I would have given, as the resem-
blance 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 perhaps 263


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 with such
a pang as it had never yet known; so umuterably
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 innocence and consistency. "No, never
* — from the hour you came back. You've never men-
tioned to me one of your masters, one of your com-
rades, 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^thaj wayj this
morning, you had since the first hour I saw you scarce
even made a reference 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-phrase — made
him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person, forced me to
treat him as an intelligent 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 r
264


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
fatigued, a languid shake of his head. "I don't — I
don't. I want to get away."
"You're tired of Bly?"
"Oh no, I like Bly."
"Well then —?"
"Oh you know what a boy wants!"
I felt 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!"
"You can't even if you do. You can't, you can't!"
— he lay beautifully staring. "My uncle must come
down and you must completely settle things."
"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may
be sure it will be to take you quite away."
"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly
what I'm working for? You'll have to tell him—
about the way you've let it all drop: you '11 have to tell
him a tremendous lot!"
The exultation with which he uttered this helped
me somehow for the instant to meet him rather more.
"And how much will you, Miles, have to tell him?
There are things he'll ask you!"
He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?"
"The things you've never told me. To make up
his mind what to do with you. He can't send you
back —"
"I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a
new field."
265


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
He said it with admirable serenity, with positive
unimpeachable gaiety; and doubtless it was that very
note that most evoked for me the poignancy, the un-
natural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance
vatTEe-enar of three months with all this bravado and
still more dishonour. 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 tender-
ness 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."
Oh I was sorry for him!"That you just want me
not to worry you?"
He looked round at me now as if in recognition of
my understanding him; then ever so gently, "To let
me alone," he replied.
There was even a strange little dignity in it, some-
thing that made me release him, yet, when I had
slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows / 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, lose him. "I've just begun a letter to
your uncle," I said.
"Well then, finish it!"
266


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 I caught for the very first time a small
faint quaver of consenting consciousness — it made
me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once
more the chance of possessing him. "Dear little
Miles, dear little Miles, if you knew how I want to help
you! It's only that, it's nothing but that, and I'd
rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong—
I'd rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little
Miles" — oh I brought it out now even if I should go
too far —"I just want you to help me to save you!"
But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too
far. The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but
it came in the form of an extraordinary blast and chill,
a gust of frozen air and a shake of the room as great
as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in.
The boy gave a loud high shriek which, lost in the
resfoFthe shock of sound, might have seemed, indis-
tinctly, 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 the drawn
curtains unstirred and the window still tight. "Why
the candle's out!" I then cried.
"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles.


XVIII
The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a
moment to say to me quietly: "Have you written,
Miss?"
"Yes — I've written." But I didn't add — for the
hour — that my letter, sealed and directed, was still
in my pocket. There would be time enough to send
it before the messenger should go to the village.
Meanwhile there had been on the part of my pupils
no more brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was
exactly as if they had both had at heart to gloss over
any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest
feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of my feeble
range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever,
geographical and historical jokes. It was conspicuous
of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to
wish to show how easily he could let me down. This
child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty
and misery that no words can translate; there was a
distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed;
never was a small natural creature, to the uninformed
eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a
more extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetu-
ally 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 268


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
deserved a_geaalty. Jay. that, by the dark prodigy I
kriew/tne imagination of all evil had been opened up to him: all the justice wltKuiTrie ached fortne proof
that it could ever have flowered into an act. He had never at any rate been such a little gentle-
man 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 play-
ing to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of
the occasion. It was literally a charming exhibition
of tact, of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his
saying outright: "The true knights we love to read
about never push an advantage too far. I know what
you mean now: you mean that — to be let alone
yourself and not followed up — you '11 cease to worry
and spy upon me, won't keep me so close to you, will
let me go and come. Well, I 'come,' you see — but I
don't go! There'll be plenty of time for that. I do
really delight in your society and I only want to show
you that I contended for a principle." It may be im-
agined 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 1
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 for-
gotten. Where all this time was Flora? When I 269


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
put the question to Miles he played on a minute be-
fore answering, and then could only say: "Why, my
dear, how do / know?" — breaking moreover into
a happy laugh which immediately_aftert as ifjl; were
a vocal accompaniment^he prolonged into incoherent
'.gxtravagaji^song.
I went straight to my room, but his sister was not
there; then, before going downstairs, I looked into
several others. As she was nowhere about she would
surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom in the comfort of
that theory I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I
found her where I had found her the evening before,
but she met my quick challenge with blank scared
ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the re-
past, 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 with-
out some special provision. Of course now indeed she
might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing
was to look for her without an air of alarm. This we
promptly arranged between us; but when, ten min-
utes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we
met in the hall, it was only to report on either side
that after guarded enquiries we had altogether failed
to trace her. For a minute there, apart from observa-
tion, 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."
270


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
Mrs. Grose stared. "Without a hat?"
I naturally also looked volumes. "Isn't that
woman always without one?""She's with her?"
"She's with her!" I declared. "We must find
them."
My hand was on my friend's arm, but she failed for
the moment, confronted with such an account of the
matter, to respond to my pressure. She communed,
on the contrary, where she stood, with her uneasiness.
"And where's Master Miles?"
"Oh he's with Quint. They'll be 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 success-
fully worked their plan. He found the most divine
little way to keep me quiet while she went off."
"'Divine'?" Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed.
"Infernal then!" I almost cheerfully rejoined.
"He has provided for himself as well. But come!"
She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions.
"You leave him —?"
"So long with Quint? Yes — I don't mind that
now."
She always ended at these moments by getting
possession of my hand, and in this manner she could
at present still stay me. But after gasping an instant
at my sudden resignation, "Because of your letter?"
she eagerly brought out.
I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew
271


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 doorway. "You go with
nothing on?"
"What do I care when the child has nothing? I
can't wait to dress," I cried, "and if you must do so
I leave you. Try meanwhile yourself upstairs."
"With them?" Oh on this the poor woman
promptly joined me!


XIX
We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly,
and I daresay rightly called, though it may have been
a sheet of water less remarkable than my untravelled
eyes supposed it. My acquaintance with sheets of
water was small, and the pool of Bly, at all events on
the few occasions of my consenting, under the pro-
tection of my pupils, to affront its surface in the old
flat-bottomed boat moored there for our use, had
impressed me both with its extent and its agitation.
The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from
the house, but I had an intimate conviction that,
wherever Flora might be, she was not near home.
She had not given me the slip for any small adventure,
and, since the day of the very great one that I had
shared with her by the pond, I had been aware, in
our walks, of the quarter to which she most inclined.
This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose's steps
so marked a direction — a direction making 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, no-
where 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 al-
273


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
ways 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 an assurance!"They say
things that, if we heard them, would simply appal
us."
"And if she is 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 appre-
hension, might befall me, the exposure of sticking to
me struck her 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
pond. This expanse, oblong in shape, was so narrow
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 stretch, and then I felt the sug-
gestion in 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 mooring-place
and then again across the lake. "Then where is it?"
274


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 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?"
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, yet 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 strong for her. It dragged her at my
heels even now, and when we had got halfway 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 hut 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 sight 275


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 recognised, as I looked
at the pair of short thick oars, quite safely drawn up,
the prodigious character of the feat for a little girl; but
I had by this time lived 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!" we both exclaimed at once.
Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass
and smiled as if her performance had now become
complete. The next thing she did, however, was to
stoop straight down and pluck ■— quite as lTTt'were all
she was there for — a big ugly spray of withered fern.
I at once felt 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 pre-
sently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we
met; but it was all done in a silence by this time fla-
grantly 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. 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 sim-
plicity of herrelation. 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 276


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
virtually said to each other was that pretexts were use-
less 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 addressed 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 bare-
headed 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 sufficient. "And
where's Miles?" she went on.
There was something in the small valour of it that
quite finished me: these three words 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 inter-
posing 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
exa'ctly_as_she had^tood"thexithSjtlrne^^dXremem-ber, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me,
my thrill oTJoy at having broughtjma proof. She was
there, so I was-justified f"shlT was there, so I was
neTmeTl:T"uernor 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 extra-
ordinary 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
wasn't in all the long reach of her desire an inch of her
evil that fell short. This first vividness of vision and 278


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
emotion were things of a few seconds, during which
Mrs. Grose's dazecLblink across to where I pointed
struck me as showing that she too at last saw, just as
it carfielTfnyown eyeTprecipItately 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. Pre-
pared and on her guard as our pursuit had actually
made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I was
therefore at once shaken by my first glimpse of the
particular one for which I had not allowed. Toseeher,
without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even
feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I an-
nounced, but only, instead of that, turn at me an
expression of hard still gravity, an expression ab-
solutely 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 a figure
portentous. I gaped at her coolness even though my
certitude of her thoroughly seeing was never greater
than at that instant, and then, in the immediate need
to defend myself, I called her passionately to witness.
"She's there, you little unhappy thing — there, there, there, and you know it as well as you know me!" I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not
at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and my
description of her couldn't have been more strikingly
confirmed than in the way in which, for all notice of
this, she simply showed me, without an expressional
concession or admission, a countenance of deeper and
deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed reprobation. I 

279


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
was by this time — if I can put the whole thing at all
together — more appalled at what I may properly call
her manner than at anything else, though it was quite
simultaneously that I became aware of having Mrs.
Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My
elder companion, the next 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 turiyto-be-sure. Miss 1 Where on earthdo
you see anything ?.'JL
*f^ould_jirny_^raspJier more quickly yet, for even
while sh^_spok^_the_hideousi ^a]n^ pjKS£nc£_stood.
tmdimmed 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 pointing hand. "You don't see
her exactly as we see ?— you mean to say you don't
now — now? She's as big as a blazing fire!Only
look, dearest woman, look—!" She looked, just as
I did, and gave me, with her deep groan of negation,
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
had been able. I might well have needed that, for with
this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hope-
lessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble,
I felt — I saw — my livid predecessor press, from her
position, on my defeat, and I took the measure, more
than all, of what I should have from this instant to
deal with in the astounding little attitude of Flora.
Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently
entered, breaking, even while there pierced through 28*


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into
breathless reassurance.
"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 ap-
pealed, blundering in, to the child. "It's all a mere
mistake and a worry and a joke — and we '11 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 shocked opposition to me. Flora continued to fix
me with her small mask of disaffection, 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 nothings J
never have. I think you're cruel. I don't like you!" Then, after this deliverance, 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 dreadful little face. In this position she
launched an almost furious wail. "Take me away, take me away — oh take me away from her!" J
"From me?" I panted.
"From you — from you!" she cried.
Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed;
while I had nothing to do but communicate again with 281


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
the figure that, on the opposite bank, without a move-
ment, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the inter-
val, 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 iome out-
side 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." For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost
frantic "Go, go!" before which, in infinite distress,
but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly con-
vinced, 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 damp-
ness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble,
had made me understand that I must have thrown
myself, on my face, to the ground and given way to a
wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and
cried and wailed, 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 282


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 reflexion to make on Flora's extraordin-
ary 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 arrange-
ments, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on my
return, but on the other hand I saw, as by an ambigu-
ous compensation, a great deal of Miles. I saw — I
can use no other phrase — so much of him that it
fairly measured more than it had ever measured. No
evening I had passed at Bly was to have had the por-
tentous 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 enquiry 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 removal 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 appeared I was sitting in 283


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 bed-
side 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. TTwas not
against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the
scene that she protested — it was conspicuously and
passionately against mine. I was at once on my feet,
and with an immense deal to ask; the more that my
friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet
me afresh. 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 Miss, it
isn't a matter on which I can push her! Yet it is n't fV^'
either, I must say, as if I much needed to. It has madp") J^^V '1
her, every inch of her, quite old*!' —' o
"Oh I see her perfectly from here. She resents,
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."
285


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 hef "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 dealingjvith me to her uncle. She'll
make me out to him the lowest creature.—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!"
286


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"He has an odd way — it comes over me now,"
I laughed, "—of proving it! But that doesn't mat-
ter. What Flora wants of course is to get rid of
me."
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 reflexions. 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?"
"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 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 must n't, before she goes,
see each other for three seconds." Then it came over
287


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
then be on my side —of which you see the import-
ance. If nothing comes I shall only fail, and you 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
lost in other reasons 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: she
put out her hand to me as a pledge. "I '11 go — I '11
go. I'll go this morning."
I wanted to be very just. "If you should wish still
to wait I'd 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 yesterday, you
have seen.—?"
She shook her head with dignity. "JVe heard — 1"
"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 cry upon my sofa and,
as I had seen her do before, gave way to all the
anguish of it.
It was quite in another manner that I for my part
let myself go. "Oh thank God!"
289


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
1 She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a
groan. "'Thank God'?"
I "It so justifies me!""It does that, Miss!"
I couldn't have desired more emphasis, but I just
waited. "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 applies 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?" 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."
290"


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 remember. My letter
giving the alarm will have reached town before you." I now felt 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 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."
291


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
They proved to be so indeed, but she could still
almost blush 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 purpose than in this case!
The note, at all events, that I put on the table yester-
day," I pursued, "will have given him so scant an
advantage — for it contained only the bare demand
for an interview — that he's already much ashamed
of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had
on his mind last evening was precisely the needo? 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 quickly recognised that it would
give me at least a measure. 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 consider
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 reflexion 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
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 in short by just
clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I
daresay that, to bear up at all, I became that morn-
ing very grand and very dry. I welcomed the con-
sciousness that I was charged with much to do, and
I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to my-
self, I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with 293


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 perambula-
tions had given me meanwhile no glimpse of him, but
they had tended to make more public the change tak-
ing place in our relation as a consequence of his having
at the piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora's inter-
est, so beguiled and befooled. The stamp of publicity
had of course been fully given by her confinement and
departure, 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 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 reflected, could better have expressed
his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my
office. What he would now permit this office to con-
sist of was yet to be settled: there was at the least a
queer relief — 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 any-
thing 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 294


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 uttered, in re-
ference to the interval just concluded, neither chal-
lenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment,
my other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived the dif-
ficulty of applying them, the accumulations of my
problem, were 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 cultivated I
decreed that my meals with the boy should be served,
as we called it, downstairs; so that I had been await-
ing him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside
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 confidence and my account, by
treating my monstrous ordeal.asja. 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 refer-
295


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
ence to what had occurred? How on the other hand
could 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. Was n't there light in the fact which, as
we shared our solitude, broke out with a specious glit-
ter it had never yet quite worn ?— the fact that (op-
portunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now
come) it would be preposterous, with a child so en-
dowed, to forego the help one might wrest from ab-
solute intelligence? What had his intelligence been
given him for but Jto_sjiyjgjblm?'" MTght nT7)ne7"to
reach his mind, risk the stretch of a stiff arm across
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 dis-
pensed 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 judgement. But what he pre-
sently produced was: "I say, my dear, is she really
very awfully ill?"
"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she '11 presently
be better. London will set her up. Bly had ceased to
agree with her. Come here and take your mutton."
He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to
his seat and, when he was established, went on. "Did
Bly disagree with her so terribly all at once?"
296


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"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 dissi-
pate 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 grossness of admonition. Whatever
he had been expelled from school for, it wasn't for
ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, to-
day; but was unmistakeably more conscious. He
was discernibly trying to take for granted more things
than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he
dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situa-
tion. Our meal was of the briefest— mine a vain pre-
tence, 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 con-
tinued 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!"


XXIII
"Oh more or less." I imagine my smile was pale.
"Not absolutely. We shouldn't like that!" I went on.
"No — I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we've
the others."
"We've the others—we've indeed the others," I
concurred.
"Yet even though we have them," he returned, 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 —"everything
depends!" On this, however, he faced to the window
again and presently reached it with his vague restless
cogitating step. He remained there a while with his
forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the
stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things of November.
I had always my hypocrisy of "work," behind which
I now gained the sofa. Steadying myself 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 impres-
sion dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the
boy's embarrassed back — none other than the im-
pression that I was not barred now. This inference
grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed 


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
bound up with the direct perception that it was posi-
tively 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, in any case, 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 busi-
ness that he had known such a lapse? The first, the
very first: I found it a splendid portent. 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 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 Bly
agrees with me /"
"You'd 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 discrimination 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 299


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 I've re-
nounced all claim to your company — you 're so be-
yond me — I at least greatly enjoy it. What else
should I stay on for?"
He looked at me more directly, and the expression
of his face, graver now, struck me as the most beauti-
ful 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 something 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 superficial
eagerness, "you wanted me to tell you something."
"That's it. Out, straight out. What you have on
your mind, you know."
"Ah then is that what you 've stayed over for?"
300


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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 impli-
cation 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 foF_m^tT'
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 suddenly 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 sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so
gentle as to be almost grotesque. "You want so to go
out again?"
"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 con-
sist oThut the obtrusion of thejdea of grossness and
guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me
a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful inter-
course? Wasn't it base to create for a being so 301


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose 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, 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 '11 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 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, some one who had frankly to be reck-
oned 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 thought-
fully 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 grasp 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 support against the nearest
piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his
back to the window. 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 be-
lieve that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a
time recovered her command of the act. It came to me
in 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 — 1
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 arms' length — had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish fore-

3°3


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
head. The face that was close to mine wasjisjwhjte as
the face againsTthe gtass^ntfout 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 baf-
fled 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 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 thevpositive certi-
tude, by this time, of the child's unconseiousncss^jfiat
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 notjof
what, and knew still less thatTalso was ancTtKat I did
know. And what did this strain of trouble matter
when my eyes went back to the window only to see 3°4


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
that the air was clear again and — by myjgersonal tri-
umph — the influence quenched? There was nothing
thererTTelt that the cause was mine and that I should
surely get all. "And you found nothing!" — I let my
elation out.
He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little head-
shake. "Nothing."
"Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy.
"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\pOusTtall iiT'^e worid.
WasTTt for that you mightn't go back?"
The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little
surprise. "Did you know I might n'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.
3°5


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
'^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 appall-
ing alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for
il»e-^stanF"c6nlburidlhg and bottomless, for if he
were innocent whatthen on earth was" IT 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 window, 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 breath-
ing 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 sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable 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 expected;
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 did n'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?"
307


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write
home."
I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradic-
tion 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 executioner;
yet it made him avert himself again, and that move-
ment made me, with a single bound and an irrepress-
ible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again,
against the glass, as if 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 divination, 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 con-
vert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of
his liberation. "No more, no more, no more!" I
shrieked to my visitant as I tried to press him against
me.
"Is she here?" 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 sud-
den fury gave me back. t*e ^D
I seized, stupefied, his supposition — some sequel to
what we had done to Flora, but this made me only 308


THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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!"
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, glaring vainly over the
place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense,
filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide over-
whelming presence. "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!" His face gave again,
round the room, its convulsed supplication. "Where?"
They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of
the name and his tribute to my devotion. "What does
he matter now, my own ?— what will he ever matter?
£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 catch-
ing him in 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 hi:





THE LIAR





THE LIAR
I
The train was half an hour late and the drive from
the station longer than he had supposed, so that when
he reached the house its inmates had dispersed to
dress for dinner and he was conducted straight to his
room. The curtains were drawn in this asylum, the
candles lighted, the fire bright, and when the servant
had quickly put out his clothes the comfortable little
place might have been one of the minor instruments
in a big orchestra — seemed to promise a pleasant
house, a various party, talk, acquaintances, affinities,
to say nothing of very good cheer. He was too occu-
pied with his profession often to pay country visits,
but he had heard people who had more time for them
speak of establishments where "they do you very
well." He foresaw that the proprietors of Stayes
would do him very well. In his bedroom on such
occasions he always looked first at the books on the
shelf and the prints on the walls; these things would
give in a sort the social, the conversational value of
his hosts. Though he had but little time to devote
to them on this occasion a cursory inspection assured
him that if the literature, as usual, was mainly Ameri'
can and humorous the art consisted neither of the
water-colour studies of the children nor of "goody"
engravings. The walls were adorned with old-fash313


THE LIAR
ioned lithographs, mostly portraits of country gentle-
men with high collars and riding-gloves: this sug-
gested — and it was encouraging— that the tradi-
tion of portraiture was held in esteem. There was
the customary novel of Mr. Le Fanu for the bedside,
the ideal reading in a country house for the hours
after midnight. Oliver Lyon could scarcely forbear
beginning it while he buttoned his shirt.
Perhaps that is why he not only found every one
assembled in the hall when he went down, but saw
from the way the move to dinner was instantly made
that they had been waiting for him. There was no
delay to introduce him to a lady, for he went out
unimportant and in a group of unmated men. The
men, straggling behind, sidled and edged as usual
at the door of the dining-room, and the denouement
of this little comedy was that he came to his place
last of all. This made him suppose himself in a suf-
ficiently distinguished company, for if he had been
humiliated — which he was not — he couldn't have
consoled himself with the reflexion that such a fate
was natural to an obscure and struggling young art-
ist. He could no longer think of himself as notably
young, alas, and if his position wasn't so brilliant as
it ought to be he could no longer justify it by calling
it a struggle. He was appreciably "known" and was
now apparently in a society of the known if not of the
knowing. This idea added to the curiosity with which
he looked up and down the long table as he settled
himself in his place.
It was a numerous party — five-and-twenty people;
rather an odd occasion to have proposed to him, as 3H


THE LIAR
he thought. He wouldn't be surrounded by the quiet
that ministers to good work; however, it had never
interfered with his work to feel the human scene en-
close it as a ring. And though he didn't know this,
it was never quiet at Stayes. When he was working
well he found himself in that happy state — the
happiest of all for an artist — in which things in gen-
eral interweave with his particular web and make
it thicker and stronger and more many-coloured.
Moreover there was an exhilaration (he had felt it
before) in the rapid change of scene — the jump, in
the dusk of the afternoon, from foggy London and
his familiar studio to a centre of festivity in the mid-
dle of Hertfordshire and a drama half-acted, a drama
of pretty women and noted men and wonderful
orchids in silver jars. He observed as a not unimport-
ant fact that one of the pretty women was beside
him: a gentleman sat on his other hand. But he ap-
praised his neighbours little as yet: he was busy with
the question of Sir David, whom he had never seen
and about whom he naturally was curious.
Evidently, however, Sir David was not at dinner,
a circumstance sufficiently explained by the other
circumstance forming our friend's principal know-
ledge of him — his being ninety years of age. Oliver
Lyon had looked forward with pleasure to painting
a picked nonagenarian, so that though the old man's
absence from table was something of a disappoint-
ment — it was an opportunity the less to observe
him before going to work — it seemed a sign that he
was rather a sacred and perhaps therefore an im-
pressive relic. Lyon looked at his son with the greater 3*5


THE LIAR
interest — wondered if the glazed bloom of such a
cheek had been transmitted from Sir David. That
would be jolly to paint in the old man — the withered
ruddiness of a winter apple, especially if the eye should
be still alive and the white hair carry out the frosty
look. Arthur Ashmore's hair had a midsummer glow,
but Lyon was glad his call had been for the great
rather than the small bearer of the name, in spite of
his never having seen the one and of the other's being
seated there before him now in the very highest relief
of impersonal hospitality.
Arthur Ashmore was a fresh - coloured thick-
necked English gentleman, but he was just not a
subject; he might have been a farmer and he might
have been a banker; you could scarcely paint him in
character. His wife didn't make up the amount; she
was a large bright negative woman who had the same
air as her husband of being somehow tremendously
new; an appearance as of fresh varnish — Lyon
could scarcely tell whether it came from her com-
plexion or from her clothes — so that one felt she
ought to sit in a gilt frame and be dealt with by refer-
ence to a catalogue or a price-list. It was as if she
were already rather a bad though expensive portrait,
knocked off by an eminent hand, and Lyon had no
wish to copy that work. The pretty woman on his
right was engaged with her neighbour, while the
gentleman on his other side looked detached and
desperate, so that he had time to lose himself in his
favourite diversion of watching face after face. This
amusement gave him the greatest pleasure he knew,
and he often thought it a mercy the human mask 316


THE LIAR
did interest him and that it had such a need, frequently
even in spite of itself, to testify, since he was to make
his living by reproducing it. Even if Arthur Ashmore
wouldn't be inspiring to paint (a certain anxiety rose
in him lest, should he make a hit with her father-in-law, Mrs. Arthur should take it into her head that he
had now proved himself worthy to handle her hus-
band); even if he had looked a little less like a page
— fine as to print and margin—without punctuation,
he would still be a refreshing iridescent surface.
But the gentleman four persons off—what was he?
Would he be a subject, or was his face only the legible
door-plate of his identity, burnished with punctual
washing and shaving—the least thing that was decent
you might know him by?
This face arrested Oliver Lyon, striking him at first
as very handsome. The gentleman might still be
called young, and his features were regular: he had a
plentiful fair moustache that curled up at the ends, a
brilliant gallant almost adventurous air, together with
a big shining breastpin in the middle of his shirt. He
appeared a fine satisfied soul, and Lyon perceived
that wherever he rested his friendly eye there fell an
influence as pleasant as the September sun — as if he
could make grapes and pears or even human affection
ripen by looking at them. What was odd in him was a
certain mixture of the correct and the extravagant: as
if he were an adventurer imitating a gentleman with
rare perfection, or a gentleman who had taken a fancy
to go about with hidden arms. He might have been a
dethroned prince or the war-correspondent of a news-
paper: he represented both enterprise and tradition, 3*7


THE LIAR
good manners and bad taste. Lyon at length fell into
conversation with the lady beside him — they dis-
pensed, as he had had to dispense at dinner-parties
before, with an introduction — by asking who this
personage might be.
"Oh Colonel Capadose, don't you know?" Lyon
didn't know and asked for further information. His
neighbour had a sociable manner and evidently was
accustomed to quick transitions; she turned from her
other interlocutor with the promptness of a good cook
who lifts the cover of the next saucepan. "He has
been a great deal in India — is n't he rather cele-
brated?" she put it. Lyon confessed he had never
heard of him, and she went on: "Well, perhaps he
isn't; but he says he is, and if you think it that's just
the same, isn't it?"
"If you think it?"
"I mean if he thinks it — that's just as good, I
suppose."
"Do you mean if he thinks he has done things he
hasn't?"
"Oh dear no; because I never really know the
difference between what people say—! He's ex-
ceedingly clever and amusing — quite the cleverest
person in the house, unless indeed you're more so.
But that I can't tell yet, can I? I only know about the
people I know; I think that's celebrity enough!"
"Enough for them?"
"Oh I see you're clever. Enough for me! But I've
heard of you," the lady went on. "I know your
pictures; I admire them. But I don't think you look
like them."
3i8


THE LIAR
"They're mostly portraits," Lyon said; "and what
I usually try for is not my own resemblance."
"I see what you mean. But they've much more
colour. Don't you suppose Vandyke's things tell a lot
about him? And now you're going to do some one
here?"
"I've been invited to do Sir David. I'm rather dis-
appointed at not seeing him this evening."
"Oh he goes to bed at some unnatural hour—
eight o'clock, after porridge and milk. You know he's
rather an old mummy."
"An old mummy?" Oliver Lyon repeated.
"I mean he wears half a dozen waistcoats and sits
by the fire. He's always cold."
"I've never seen him and never seen any portrait
or photograph of him," Lyon said. "I'm surprised at
his never having had anything done — at their waiting
all these years."
"Ah that's because he was afraid, you know; it
was his pet superstition. He was sure that if anything
were done he would die directly afterwards. He has
only consented to-day."
"He's ready to die then?"
"Oh now he's so old he doesn't care."
"Well, I hope I shan't kill him," said Lyon. "It
was rather unnatural of his son to send for me.""Oh they've nothing to gain — everything is theirs
already!" his companion rejoined, as if she took this
speech quite literally. Her talkativeness was system-
atic — she fraternised as seriously as she might have
played whist. "They do as they like— they fill the
house with people — they have carte blanche"
319


THE LIAR
"I see — but there's still the 'title.'"
"Yes, but what's the tuppenny title?"
Our artist broke into laughter at this, whereat his
companion stared. Before he had recovered himself
she was scouring the plain with her other neighbour.
The gentleman on his left at last risked an observation
as if it had been a move at chess, exciting in Lyon
however a comparative wantonness. This personage
played his part with difficulty: he uttered a remark as
a lady fires a pistol, looking the other way. To catch
the ball Lyon had to bend his ear, and this movement
led to his observing a handsome creature who was
seated on the same side, beyond his interlocutor. Her
profile was presented to him and at first he was only
struck with its beauty; then it produced an impression
still more agreeable — a sense of undimmed remem-
brance and intimate association. He had not recog-
nised her on the instant only because he had so little
expected to see her there; he had not seen her any-
where for so long, and no news of her now ever came
to him. She was often in his thoughts, but she had
passed out of his life. He thought of her twice a week;
that may be called often, even for fidelity, when it has
been kept up a dozen years. The moment after he
recognised her he felt how true it was that only she
could carry that head, the most charming head in the
world and of which there could never be a replica.
She was leaning forward a little; she remained in pro-
file, slightly turned to some further neighbour. She
was listening, but her eyes moved, and after a mo-
ment Lyon followed their direction. They rested on
the gentleman who had been described to him as 320


THE LIAR
Colonel Capadose — rested, he made out, as with an
habitual visible complacency. This was not strange,
for the Colonel was unmistakeably formed to attract
the sympathetic gaze of woman; but Lyon felt it as the
source of an ache that she could let him look at her so
long without giving him a glance. There was nothing
between them to-day and he had no rights, but she
must have known he was coming —it was of course
no such tremendous event, but she couldn't have been
staying in the house without some echo of it — and it
wasn't natural this should absolutely fail to affect
her.
She was looking at Colonel Capadose as if she had
been in love with him — an odd business for the
proudest, most reserved of women. But doubtless it
was all right if her husband was satisfied: he had
heard indefinitely, years before, that she was married,
and he took for granted — as he had not heard — the
presence of the happy man on whom she had con-
ferred what she had refused to a poor art-student at
Munich. Colonel Capadose seemed aware of nothing,
and this fact, incongruously enough, rather annoyed
Lyon than pleased him. Suddenly the lady moved her
head, showing her full face to our hero. He was so
prepared with a greeting that he instantly smiled, as a
shaken jug overflows; but she made no response,
turned away again and sank back in her chair. All
her face said in that instant was "You see I'm as
handsome as ever." To which he mentally subjoined:
"Yes, and as much good as ever it does me!" He
asked the young man beside him if he knew who that
beautiful being was—the fourth person beyond him. 321


THE LIAR
The young man leaned forward, considered and then
said: "I think she's Mrs. Capadose."
"Do you mean his wife — that fellow's?" And
Lyon indicated the subject of the information given
him by his other neighbour.
"Oh is he Mr. Capadose?" said the young man,
to whom it appeared to mean little. He admitted his
ignorance of these values and explained it by saying
that there were so many people and he had come but
the day before. What was definite to our friend was
that Mrs. Capadose was in love with her husband
—so that he wished more than ever he might have
married her.
"She's very fond and true," he found himself say-
ing three minutes later, with a small ironic ring, to
the lady on his right. He added that he meant Mrs.
Capadose.
"Ah you know her then?"
"I knew her once upon a time — when I was living
abroad."
"Why then were you asking me about her hus-
band?" •
"Precisely for thatreason." Lyon was clear. "She
married after that .—T did n't even know her present
name."
"How then do you know it now?""This gentleman has just told me — he appears to
know."
"I didn't know he knew anything," said the lady
with a crook that took him in.
"I don't think he knows anything but that.""Then you've found out for yourself that she's
322


THE LIAR
—what do you call it ?— tender and true? What
do you mean by that?"
"Ah you mustn't question me — I want to put
things to you" Lyon said. "How do you all like her
here?"
"You ask too much! I can only speak for myself.
I think she's hard."
"That's only because she's honest and straight-
forward."
"Do you mean I like people in proportion as they
deceive?"
"I think we all do, so long as we don't find them
out," Lyon said. "And then there's something in her
face — a sort of nobleness of the Roman type, in spite
of her having such English eyes. In fact she's Eng-
lish down to the ground; but her complexion, her low
forehead and that beautiful close little wave in her
dark hair make her look like a transfigured Tras-
teverina."
"Yes, and she always sticks pins and daggers into
her head, to bring out that effect. I must say I like her
husband better: he gives so much."
"Well, when I knew her there was no comparison
that could injure her," Lyon richly sighed. "She was
altogether the most delightful thing in Munich."
"In Munich?"
"Her people lived there; they weren't rich — in
pursuit of economy in fact, and Munich was very
cheap. Her father was the younger son of some noble
house; he had married a second time and had a lot of
little mouths to feed. She was the child of the first
wife and didn't like her stepmother, but she was 323


THE LIAR
charming to her little brothers and sisters. I once
made a sketch of her as Werther's Charlotte cutting
bread and butter while the children clustered round
her. All the artists in the place were in love with her,
but she wouldn't look at 'the likes' of us. She was
too proud — I grant you that, but not stuck up nor
young-ladyish, only perfectly simple and frank about
it. She used to remind me of Thackeray's Ethel New-
come. She told me she must marry well: it was the
one thing she could do for her family. I suppose you'd
say she has married well."
"She told yon?" smiled Lyon's neighbour. "Oh of course I proposed to her too. But she
evidently thinks so herself!" he added. "I mean
that it's no mistake."
When the ladies left the table the host as usual bade
the gentlemen draw together, so that Lyon found him-
self opposite to Colonel Capadose. The conversation
was mainly about the "run," for it had apparently
been a great day in the hunting-field. Most of the
men had a comment or an anecdote, several had
many; but the Colonel's pleasant voice was the most
audible in the chorus. It was a bright and fresh but
masculine organ, just such a voice as, to Lyon's sense,
such a "fine man" ought to have had. It appeared
from his allusions that he was a very straight rider,
which was also very much what Lyon would have
expected. Not that he swaggered, for his points were
all quietly and casually made; but they had all to do
with some dangerous experiment or close shave.
Lyon noted after a little that the attention paid by the
company to the Colonel's remarks was not in direct 32+


THE LIAR
proportion to the interest they seemed to offer; the
result of which was that the speaker, who noticed that
he at least was listening, began to treat him as his par-
ticular auditor and to fix his eyes on him as he talked.
Lyon had nothing to do but to look sympathetic and
assent — the narrator building on the tribute so ren-
dered. A neighbouring squire had had an accident;
he had come a cropper in an awkward place — just at
the finish — with consequences that looked grave. He
had struck his head; he remained insensible up to the
last accounts: there had evidently been concussion of
the brain. There was some exchange of views as to his
recovery, how soon it would take place or whether
it would take place at all; which led the Colonel to
confide to our artist across the table that he shouldn't despair of a fellow even if he didn't come round
for weeks — for weeks and weeks and weeks — for
months, almost for years. He leaned forward (Lyon
leaned forward to listen) and mentioned that he knew
from personal experience how little limit there really
was to the time a fellah might lie like a stone without
being the worse for it. It had happened to him in
Ireland years before; he had been pitched out of a
dogcart, had turned a sheer somersault and landed
on his head. They had thought he was dead, but he
wasn't; they had carried him first to the nearest cabin,
where he lay for some days with the pigs, and then to
an inn in a neighbouring town — it was a near thing
they hadn't put him underground. He had been
completely insensible— without a ray of recognition
of any human thing— for three whole months;
hadn't had a glimmer of consciousness of any blessed 325


THE LIAR
thing. It had been touch and go to that degree that
they couldn't come near him, couldn't feed him,
could scarcely look at him. Then one day he had
opened his eyes — as fit as a flea!
"I give you my honour it had done me good — it
rested my brain." He conveyed, though without ex-
cessive emphasis, that with an intelligence so active
as his these periods of repose were providential. Lyon
was struck by his story, but wanted to ask if he hadn't
shammed a little; not in relating it, only in keeping
so quiet. He hesitated however, in time, to betray a
doubt — he was so impressed with the tone in which
Colonel Capadose pronounced it the turn of a hair
that they hadn't buried him alive. That had hap-
pened to a friend of his in India — a fellow who was
supposed to have died of jungle-fever and whom they
clapped into a coffin. He was going on to recite the
further fate of this unfortunate gentleman when Mr.
Ashmore said a word and everyone rose for the move
to the drawing-room. Lyon noticed that by this time
no one was heeding his new friend's prodigies. These
two came round on either side of the table and met
while their companions hung back for each other.
"And do you mean your comrade was literally
buried alive?" asked Lyon in some suspense.
The Colonel looked at him as with the thread of the
conversation already lost. Then his face brightened
—and when it brightened it was doubly handsome.
"Upon my soul he was shoved into the ground!"
"And left there?"
"Left there till I came and hauled him out.""You came?"
326


THE LIAR
"I dreamed about him — it's the most extraordin-
ary story: I heard him calling to me in the night. I
took on myself to dig him up. You know there are
people in India — a kind of beastly race, the ghouls—
who violate graves. I had a sort of presentiment that
they would get at him first. I rode straight, I can tell
you; and, by Jove, a couple of them had just broken
ground! Crack — crack from a couple of barrels,
and they showed me their heels as you may believe.
Would you credit that I took him out myself? The
air brought him round and he was none the worse.
He has got his pension — he came home the other
day. He'd do anything for me," the narrator added.
"He called to you in the night ?" said Lyon, much
thrilled.
"That's the interesting point. Now what was it?
It wasn't his ghost, because he wasn't dead. It
wasn't himself, because he couldn't. It was some
confounded brain-wave or other! You see India's
a strange country — there's an element of the mys-
terious: the air's full of things you can't explain."
They passed out of the dining-room, and this mas-
ter of anecdote, who went among the first, was sepa-
rated from his newest victim; but a minute later,
before they reached the drawing-room, he had come
back. "Ashmore tells me who you are. Of course
I've often heard of you. I'm very glad to make your
acquaintance. My wife used to know you."
"I'm glad she remembers me. I recognised her
at dinner and was afraid she didn't."
"Ah I daresay she was ashamed," said the Colonel
with genial ease.
327


THE LIAR
"Ashamed of me?" Lyon replied in the same key.
"Wasn't there something about a picture? Yes;
you painted her portrait."
"Many times," Lyon said; " and she may very well
have been ashamed of what I made of her."
"Well, / wasn't, my dear sir; it was the sight of
that picture, which you were so good as to present to
her, that made me first fall in love with her."
Our friend lived over again for a few seconds a lost
felicity. "Do you mean one with the children— cut-
ting bread and butter?"
"Bread and butter? Bless me, no — vine-leaves
and a leopard-skin. A regular Bacchante."
"Ah yes," said Lyon; "I remember. It was the
first decent portrait I painted. I should be curious
to see it to-day."
"Don't ask her to show it to you — she'll feel it
awkward," the Colonel went on.
"Awkward ?"—our artist wondered.
"We parted with it — in the most disinterested
manner," the other laughed. "An old friend of my
wife's — her family had known him intimately when
they lived in Germany — took the most extraordinary
fancy to it: the Grand Duke of Silberstadt-Schreck-
enstein, don't you know? He came out to Bombay
while we were there and he spotted your picture (you
know he's one of the greatest collectors in Europe)
and made such eyes at it that, upon my word — it
happened to be his birthday — she told him he might
have it to get rid of him. He was perfectly enchanted
—but we miss the picture."
"It's very good of you," Lyon said. "If it's in a
328


THE LIAR
great collection — a work of my incompetent youth
— I'm infinitely honoured."
"Oh he keeps it in one of his castles; I don't know
which — you know he has so many. He sent us, be-
fore he left India — to return the compliment — a
magnificent old vase."
"That was more than the thing was worth," Lyon
modestly urged.
Colonel Capadose gave no heed to this observation;
his thoughts now seemed elsewhere. After a moment,
however, he said: "If you '11 come and see us in town
she '11 show you the vase." And as they passed into
the drawing-room he gave his fellow visitor a friendly
propulsion. "Go and speak to her; there she is.
She'll be delighted."
Oliver Lyon took but a few steps into the wide
saloon; he stood there a moment looking at the bright
composition of the lamplit group of fair women, the
single figures, the great setting of white and gold, the
panels of old damask, in the centre of each of which
was a single celebrated picture. There was a subdued
lustre in the scene and an air as of the shining trains
of dresses tumbled over the carpet. At the furthest
end of the room sat Mrs. Capadose, rather isolated;
she was on a small sofa with an empty place beside
her. Lyon couldn't flatter himself she had been keep-
ing it for him; her failure to take up his shy signal at
table contradicted this, but his desire to join her was
too strong. Moreover he had her husband's sanction;
so he crossed the room, stepping over the tails of
gowns, and stood before her with his appeal. "I hope
you don't mean to repudiate me."
329


THE LIAR
She looked up at him with frank delight. "I'm so
glad to see you. I was charmed when I heard you
were coming."
"I tried to get a smile from you at dinner— but
I couldn't," Lyon returned.
"I didn't see — I didn't understand. Besides, I
hate smirking and telegraphing. Also I'm very shy
—you won't have forgotten that. Now we can com-
municate comfortably." And she made a better place
for him on her sofa. He sat down and they had a
talk that smote old chords in him; the sense of what
he had loved her for came back to him, as well as not
a little of the actual effect of that cause. She was still
the least spoiled beauty he had ever seen, with an
absence of the "wanton" or of any insinuating art
that resembled an omitted faculty: she affected him
at moments as some fine creature from an asylum —
a surprising deaf-mute or one of the operative blind.
Her noble pagan head gave her privileges that she
neglected, and when people were admiring her brow
she was wondering if there were a good fire in her
bedroom, or at the very most in theirs. She was sim-
ple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman,
not stupid. Now and again she dropped something,
some small fruit of discrimination, that might have
come from a mind, have been an impression at first
hand. She had no imagination and only the simpler
feelings, but several of these had grown up to full
size. Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, re-
minded her of incidents, pleasures and pains, asked
her about her father and the others; and she spoke
in return of her being so impressed with his own fame, 33°


THE LIAR
his brilliant position in the world, that she hadn't
felt sure he would notice her or that his mute appeal
at table was meant for her. This was plainly a per-
fectly truthful speech — she was incapable of any
other — and he was affected by such humility on the
part of a woman whose grand line was unique. Her
father was dead; one of her brothers was in the navy
and the other on a ranch in America; two of her sisters
were married and the youngest just coming out and
very pretty. She didn't mention her stepmother. She
questioned him on his own story, and he described it
mainly as his not having married.
"Oh you ought to," she answered. "It's the best
thing."
"I like that — from you!"
"Why not from me? I'm very happy."
"That's just why I can't be," he returned. "It's
cruel of you to praise your state. But I've had the
pleasure of making the acquaintance of your husband.
We had a good bit of talk in the other room."
"You must know him better — you must know
him really well," said Mrs. Capadose.
"I'm sure that the further you go the more you
find. But he makes a fine show too."
She rested her good grey eyes on this recovered
"backer." "Don't you think he's handsome?"
"Handsome and clever and entertaining. You
see I'm generous."
"Yes; you must know him well," Mrs. Capadose
repeated.
"He has seen a great deal of life," said her com-
panion.
331


THE LIAR
"Ah we've been in so many situations. You must
see my little girl. She's nine years old — she's too
beautiful."
Lyon rose fully to the occasion. "You must bring
her to my studio some day — I should like to paint
her."
"Oh don't speak of that," said Mrs. Capadose.
"It reminds me of something so distressing."
"I hope you don't mean of when you used to sit to
me — though that may well have bored you."
"It's not what you did — it's what we've done.
It's a confession I must make — it's a weight on my
mind! I mean on the subject of the lovely picture you
gave me — it used to be so much admired. When
you come to see me in London — and I count on your
doing that very soon — I shall see you looking all
round. I can't tell you I keep it in my own room
because I love it so, for the simple reason—" It
fairly pulled her up.
"Because you can't tell wicked lies," said Lyon.
"No, I can't. So before you ask for it—"
"Oh I know you parted with it — the blow has already fallen," Lyon interrupted.
"Ah then you've heard? I was sure you would
But do you know what we got for it? Two hundred
pounds."
"You might have got much more," the artist
smiled.
"That seemed a great deal at the time. We were
in want of the money — it was a good while ago, when
we first married. Our means were very small then,
but fortunately that has changed rather for the better. 332


THE LIAR
We had the chance; it really seemed a big sum, and
I'm afraid we jumped at it. My husband had ex-
pectations which have partly come into effect, so that
now we do well enough. But meanwhile the picture
went."
"Fortunately the original remained. But do you
mean that two hundred was the value of the vase?"
Lyon asked.
"Of the vase?"
"The beautiful old Indian vase — the Grand
Duke's offering.""The Grand Duke?"
"What's his name? — Silberstadt-Schreckenstein.
Your husband mentioned the transaction."
"Oh my husband!" said Mrs. Capadose; and Lyon
now saw her change colour.
Not to add to her embarrassment, but to clear up
the ambiguity, which he perceived the next moment
he had better have left alone, he went on: "He tells
me it's now in his collection."
"In the Grand Duke's? Ah you know its reputa-
tion? I believe it contains treasures." She was be-
wildered, but she recovered herself, and Lyon made
the mental reflexion that for some reason which would
seem good when he knew it the husband and the wife
had prepared different versions of the same incident.
It was true that he didn't exactly see Everina Brant
preparing a version; that wasn't her line of old, and
indeed there was no such subterfuge in her eyes to-day.
At any rate they both had the matter too much on
their conscience. He changed the subject — said Mrs.
Capadose must really bring the little girl. He sat with 333


THE LIAR
her some time longer and imagined — perhaps too
freely — her equilibrium slightly impaired, as if she
were annoyed at their having been even for a moment
at cross-purposes. This didn't prevent his saying to
her at the last, just as the ladies began to gather them-
selves for bed: "You seem much impressed, from
what you say, with my renown and my prosperity,
and you are so good as greatly to exaggerate them.
Would you have married me if you had known I was
destined to success?"
"I did know it."
"/ did n't, then!"
"You were too modest."
"You didn't think so when I proposed to you."
"Well, if I had married you I couldn't have mar-
ried him — and he's so awfully nice," Mrs. Capadose
said. Lyon knew this was her faith — he had learned
that at dinner — but it vexed him a little to hear her
proclaim it. The gentleman designated by the pro-
noun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for
good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her
husband as she turned away, "He wants to paint
Amy."
"Ah she's a charming child, a most interesting
little creature," the Colonel said to Lyon. "She does
the most remarkable things."
Mrs. Capadose stopped in the rustling procession
that followed the hostess out of the room. "Don't
tell him, please don't," she said.
"Don't tell him what?"
"Why, what she does. Let him find out for him-
self." And she passed on.
334


THE LIAR
"She thinks I swagger about the child — that I
bore people," said the Colonel. "I hope you smoke."
He appeared ten minutes later in the smoking-room,
brilliantly equipped in a suit of crimson foulard cov-
ered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye,
made him feel that the modern age has its splen-
dour too and its opportunities for costume. If his wife
was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period of
colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the
sixteenth century. They were a remarkable couple,
Lyon thought, and as he looked at the Colonel stand-
ing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece and
emitting great smoke-puffs he didn't wonder Ever-
ina couldn't regret she hadn't married him. All the
men collected at Stayes were not smokers and some
of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose remarked
that there probably would be a smallish muster, they
had had such a hard day's work. That was the worst
of a hunting- house — the men were so sleepy after
dinner; it was a great sell for the ladies, even for those
who hunted themselves, women being so tough that
they never showed it. But most fellows revived under
the stimulating influences of the smoking-room,
and some of them, in this confidence, would turn up
yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence — not
all — might have been seen in a cluster of glasses
and bottles on a table near the fire, which made
the great salver and its contents twinkle sociably.
The others lurked as yet in various improper corners
of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone
with Colonel Capadose for some moments before
their companions, in varied eccentricities of uniform, 335


THE LIAR
straggled in, and he felt how little loss of vital tissue
this wonderful man had to repair.
They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed
an oddity of construction in the smoking-room; and
the Colonel explained that it consisted of two distinct
parts, one of very great antiquity. They were two
complete houses in short, the old and the new, each
of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two
formed together an enormous structure — Lyon must
make a point of going all over it. The modern piece
had been erected by the old man when he bought the
property; oh yes, he had bought it forty years before
— it hadn't been in the family: there hadn't been any
particular family for it to be in. He had had the good
taste not to spoil the original house —he had not
touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining
it on. It was very curious indeed — a most irregular
rambling mysterious pile, where they now and then
discovered a walled-up room or a secret staircase.
To his mind it was deadly depressing, however; even
the modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to
make it cheerful. There was some story of how a
skeleton had been found years before, during some
repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the
passages; but the family were rather shy of its being
talked about. The place they were in was of course
in the old part, which contained after all some of the
best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive
kitchen, half-modernised at some intermediate period.
"My room is in the old part too then — I'm very
glad," Lyon said. "It's very comfortable and con-
tains all the latest conveniences, but I observed the 336


THE LIAR
depth of the recess of the door and the evident anti-
quity of the corridor and staircase — the first short
one — after I came out. That panelled corridor is
admirable; it looks as if it stretched away, in its brown
dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much
impression on it) for half a mile."
"Oh don't go to the end of it!" the Colonel warn-
ingly smiled.
"Does it lead to the haunted room ?" Lyon asked.
His companion looked at him a moment. "Ah you
know about that?"
"No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from
hope. I've never had any luck — I've never stayed
in a spooky house. The places I go to are always as
safe as Charing Cross. I want to see — whatever there
is, the regular thing. Is there a ghost here?"
"Of course there is — a rattling good one."
"And have you seen him?"
"Oh don't ask me what /'ve seen — I should tax
your credulity. I don't like to talk of these things.
But there are two or three as bad — that is, as good!
—rooms as you '11 find anywhere."
"Do you mean in my corridor ?" Lyon asked.
"I believe the worst is at the far end. But you'd be
ill-advised to sleep there."
"Ill-advised?"
"Until you've finished your job. You '11 get letters
of importance the next morning and take the 10.20.""Do you mean I shall invent a pretext for running away?"
"Unless you're braver than almost any one has
ever been. They don't often put people to sleep there, 337


THE LIAR
but sometimes the house is so crowded that they have
to. The same thing always happens—ill-concealed
agitation at the breakfast-table and letters of the
greatest importance. Of course it's a bachelor's room,
and my wife and I are at the other end of the house.
But we saw the comedy three days ago— the day
after we got here. A young fellow had been put there
— I forget his name — the house was so full; and the
usual consequence followed. Letters at breakfast —
an awfully queer face — an urgent call to town — so
sorry his visit was cut short. Ashmore and his wife
looked at each other and off the poor devil went."
"Ah that wouldn't suit me; I must do my job,"
said Lyon. "But do they mind your speaking of it?
Some people who've a good ghost are very proud of
it, you know."
What answer Colonel Capadose was on the point
of making to this query our hero was not to learn,
for at that moment their host had walked into the
room accompanied by three or four of their fellow
guests. Lyon was conscious that he was partly an-
swered by the Colonel's not going on with the subject.
This on the other hand was rendered natural by the
fact that one of the gentlemen appealed to him for an
opinion on a point under discussion, something to do
with the everlasting history of the day's run. To Lyon
himself Mr. Ashmore began to talk, expressing his
regret for the delay of this pleasure. The topic that
suggested itself was naturally that most closely con-
nected with the motive of the artist's visit. The latter
observed that it was a great disadvantage to him not
to have had some preliminary acquaintance with Sir 338


THE LIAR
David — in most cases he found this so important.
But the present sitter was so far advanced in life that
there was doubtless no time to lose. "Oh I can tell
you all about him," said Mr. Ashmore; and for half
an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interest-
ing as well as a little extravagant, and Lyon felt sure
he was a fine old boy to have endeared himself so to a
son who was evidently not a gusher. At last he got up
— he said he must go to bed if he wished to be fresh
for his work in the morning. To which his host
replied "Then you must take your candle; the lights
are out; past this hour I don't keep my servants up."
In a moment Lyon had his glimmering taper in
hand, and as he was leaving the room — he didn't
disturb the others with a good-night, they were ab-
sorbed in the lemon-squeezer and the soda-water cork
■— he remembered other occasions on which he had
made his way to bed alone through a darkened
country-house: such occasions had not been rare, for
he was almost always the first to leave the smoking-
room. If he hadn't stayed at places of markedly evil
repute he had, none the less — having too much
imagination — sometimes found the great black halls
and staircases rather "creepy" : there had been often
a sinister effect for his nerves in the sound of his tread
through the long passages or the way the winter moon
peeped into tall windows on landings. It occurred to
him that if houses without supernatural pretensions
could look so wicked at night the old corridors of
Stayes would certainly give him a sensation. He
didn't know whether the proprietors were sensitive;
very often, as he had said to Colonel Capadose, people 339


THE LIAR
enjoyed the impeachment. What determined him to
speak despite the risk was a need that had suddenly
come to him to measure the Colonel's accuracy. As he
had his hand on the door he said to his host: "I hope
I shan't meet any ghosts.""Any ghosts?"
"You ought to have some — in this fine old part." "We do our best, but they're difficult to raise,"
said Mr. Ashmore. "I don't think they like the hot-
water pipes."
"They remind them too much of their own climate?
But haven't you a haunted room — at the end of
my passage?"
"Oh there are stories —we try to keep them up."
"I should like very much to sleep there," Lyon said.
"Well, you can move there to-morrow if you like."
"Perhaps I had better wait," Lyon smiled, "till
I've done my work." But he was to have presently
the slightly humiliated sense of having been "arch"
about nothing.
"Very good; but you won't work there, you know.
My father will sit to you in his own apartments."
"Oh it isn't that; it's the fear of running away— like that gentleman three days ago."
"Three days ago? What gentleman?" Mr. Ash-
more asked.
"The one who got urgent letters at breakfast and
fled by the 10.20. Did he stand more than one
night?"
"I don't know what you're talking about"—the
son of Stayes was sturdy and blank. "There was no
such gentleman — three days ago."
340


THE LIAR
"Ah so much the better," said Lyon, nodding
good-night and departing. He took his course, as
he remembered it, with his wavering candle, and,
though he encountered a great many gruesome ob-
jects, safely reached the passage out of which his
room opened. In the complete darkness it seemed
to stretch away still further, but he followed it, for
the curiosity of the thing, to the end. He passed sev-
eral doors with the name of the room painted up, but
found nothing else. He was tempted to try the last
door, to look into the room his friend had incrim-
inated; but he felt this would be indiscreet, that gentleman's warrant was somehow a document of too
many flourishes. There might be apparitions or
other uncanny things and there mightn't; but there
was surely nothing in the house so odd as Colonel
Capadose.


II
Lyon found Sir David Ashmore a beautiful subject
as well as the serenest and blandest of sitters. More-
over he was a very informing old man, tremendously
puckered but not in the least dim; and he wore ex-
actly the furred dressing-gown his portrayer would
have chosen. He was proud of his age but ashamed
of his infirmities, which however he greatly exag-
gerated and which didn't prevent his submitting to
the brush as bravely as he might have to the salutary
surgical knife. He sat there with the firm eyes and
set smile of "Well, do your worst!" He demolished
the legend of his having feared the operation would
be fatal, giving an explanation which pleased our
friend much better. He held that a gentleman should
be painted but once in his life — that it was eager
and fatuous to be hung up all over the place. That
was good for women, who made a pretty wall-pattern;
but the male face didn't lend itself to decorative
repetition. The proper time for the likeness was at
the last, when the whole man was there, when you got
the sum of his experience. Lyon couldn't reply, as
he would have done in many a case, that this was
not a real synthesis — you had to allow so for leak-
age; since there had been no crack in Sir David's
crystallisation. He spoke of his portrait as a plain
map of the country, to be consulted by his children
in a case of uncertainty. A proper map could be
342


THE LIAR
"A monstrous foible?" Lyon echoed."He pulls the long bow—the longest that ever was."
Lyon's brush stopped short, while he repeated, for
somehow the words both startled him and brought
light: "'The longest that ever was'?"
"You're very lucky not to have had to catch him."
Lyon debated. "Well, I think I have rather caught
him. He revels in the miraculous."
"Oh it isn't always the miraculous. He'11 lie about
the time of day, about the name of his hatter. It's
quite disinterested."
"Well, it's very base," Lyon declared, feeling
rather sick for what Everina Brant had done with
herself.
"Oh it's an extraordinary trouble to take," said
the old man, "but this fellow isn't in himself at all
base. There's no harm in him and no bad intention;
he does n't steal nor cheat nor gamble nor drink;
he's very kind — he sticks to his wife, is fond of his
children. He simply can't give you a straight an-
swer."
"Then everything he told me last night, I now see,
was tarred with that brush: he delivered himself of a
series of the steepest statements. They stuck when
I tried to swallow them, yet I never thought of so
simple an explanation."
"No doubt he was in the vein," Sir David went on.
"It's a natural peculiarity — as you might limp or
stutter or be left-handed. I believe it comes and goes
with changes of the wind. My son tells me that his
friends quite allow for it and don't pin him down —
for the sake of his wife, whom every one likes."
344


THE LIAR
tion. He watched her with an interest deeply quick-
ened when he mingled with the company; he had
had his own troubles in life, but had rarely been so
anxious about anything as about this question of what
the loyalty of a wife and the infection of an example
would have made of a perfectly candid mind. Oh he
would answer for it that whatever other women might
be prone to do she, of old, had stuck to the truth as a
bather who can't swim sticks to shallow water. Even
if she hadn't been too simple for deviations she would
have been too proud, and if she hadn't had too much
conscience would have had too little eagerness. The
lie was the last thing she would have endured or con-
doned — the particular thing she wouldn't have for-
given. Did she sit in torment while her husband gave
the rein, or was she now too so perverse that she
thought it a fine thing to be striking at the expense —
Lyon would have been ready to say — of one's de-
cency? It would have taken a wondrous alchemy —
working backwards, as it were — to produce this
latter result. Besides these alternatives — that she
suffered misery in silence and that she was so much
in love that her husband's exorbitance seemed to her
but an added richness, a proof of life and talent —
there was still the possibility that she hadn't found
him out, that she took his false coinage at his own
valuation. A little reflexion rendered this hypothesis
untenable; it was too evident that the account he gave
of things must repeatedly have contradicted her own
knowledge. Within an hour or two of his meeting
them Lyon had seen her confronted with that per-
fectly gratuitous invention about the profit they had 346


THE LIAR
made of his early picture. Even then indeed she had
not, so far as he could see, smarted, and — but for the
present he could only stare at the mystery!
Even if it hadn't been interfused, through his un-
eradicated interest in Mrs. Capadose, with an element
of suspense, the question would still have been attach-
ing and worrying; since, truly, he hadn't painted
portraits so many years without becoming curious of
queer cases. His attention was limited for the moment
to the opportunity the following three days might
yield, as the Colonel and his wife were going on to
another house. It fixed itself largely of course upon
the Colonel too — the fellow was so queer a case.
Moreover it had to go on very quickly. Lyon was at
once too discreet and too fond of his own intimate
inductions to ask other people how they answered his
conundrum — too afraid also of exposing the woman
he once had loved. It was probable indeed that light
would come to him from the talk of their companions;
the Colonel's idiosyncrasy, both as it affected his
own situation and as it affected his wife, would be a
familiar theme in any house in which he was in the
habit of staying. Lyon hadn't observed in the circles
in which he visited any marked abstention from com-
ment on the singularities of their members. It inter-
fered with his progress that the Colonel hunted all
day, while he plied his brushes and chatted with Sir
David; but a Sunday intervened and that partly made
it up. Mrs. Capadose fortunately didn't hunt and, his
work done, was not inaccessible. He took a couple of
good walks with her—she was fond of good walks —
and beguiled her at tea into a friendly nook in the 347


THE LIAR
hall. Regard her as he might he couldn't make out
to himself that she was consumed by a hidden shame;
the sense of being married to a man whose word had
no worth was not, in her spirit, so far as he could
guess, the canker within the rose. Her mind appeared
to have nothing on it but its own placid frankness,
and when he sounded her eyes — with the long plum-
met he occasionally permitted himself to use — they
had no uncomfortable consciousness. He talked to
her again and still again of the dear old days — re-
minded her of things he hadn't had (before this
reunion) any sense of himself remembering. Then
he spoke to her of her husband, praised his appear-
ance, his talent for conversation, professed to have
felt a quick friendship for him and asked, with an
amount of "cheek" for which he almost blushed,
what manner of man he was. "What manner?" she
echoed. "Dear me, how can one describe one's hus-
band? I like him very much."
"Ah you've insisted on that to me already!"
Lyon growled to exaggeration.
"Then why do you ask me again?" She added
in a moment, as if she were so happy that she could
afford to take pity on him: "He's everything that's
good and true and kind. He's a soldier and a gentle-
man and a dear! He hasn't a fault. And he has
great, great ability."
"Yes, he strikes one as having great, great ability.
But of course I can't think him a dear."
"I don't care what you think him!" Everina
laughed, looking still handsomer in the act than he
had ever seen her. She was either utterly brazen or 348


THE LIAR
of a contrition quite impenetrable, and he had little
prospect of extorting from her what he somehow so
longed for — some avowal that she had after all
better have married a man who was not a by-word
for the most contemptible, the least heroic of vices.
Hadn't she seen, hadn't she felt, the smile, the cold
faded smile of complete depreciation, go round when
her husband perjured himself to some particularly
characteristic blackness? How could a woman of
her quality live with that day after day, year after
year, except by her quality's altering? But he would
believe in the alteration only when he should have
heard her lie. He was held by his riddle and yet
impatient of it, he asked himself all kinds of questions.
Didn't she lie, after all, when she let his lies pass
without turning a hair? Wasn't her life a perpetual
complicity, and didn't she aid and abet him by the
simple fact that she wasn't disgusted with him? Then
again perhaps she was disgusted and it was the mere
desperation of her pride that had given her an in-
scrutable mask. Perhaps she protested in private,
passionately; perhaps every night, in their own apart-
ments, after the day's low exhibition, she had
things out with him in a manner known only to the
pair themselves. But if such scenes were of no avail
and he took no more trouble to cure himself, how
could she regard him, and after so many years of
marriage too, with the perfectly artless complacency
that Lyon had surprised in her in the course of the
first day's dinner? If our friend hadn't been in love
with her he would surely have taken the Colonel's
delinquencies less to heart. As the case stood they 349


THE LIAR
fairly turned to the tragical for him, even while he
was sharply aware of how merely "his funny way"
they were to others — and of how funny his, Oliver
Lyon's, own way of regarding them would have
seemed to every one.
The observation of these three days showed him
that if Capadose was an abundant he was not a mal-
ignant liar and that his fine faculty exercised itself
mainly on subjects of small direct importance. "He's
the liar platonic," he said to himself; "he's disinter-
ested, as Sir David said, he doesn't operate with a
hope of gain or with a desire to injure. It's art for
art — he's prompted by some love of beauty. He
has an inner vision of what might have been, of what
ought to be, and he helps on the good cause by the
simple substitution of a shade. He lays on colour,
as it were, and what less do I do myself?" His dis-
order had a wide range, but a family likeness ran
through all its forms, which consisted mainly of their
singular futility. It was this that made them an afflic-
tion; they encumbered the field of conversation, took
up valuable space, turned it into the desert of a per-
petual shimmering mirage. For the falsehood uttered
under stress a convenient place can usually be found,
as for a person who presents himself with an author's
order at the first night of a play. But the mere lux-
urious lie is the gentleman without a voucher or a
ticket who accommodates himself with a stool in
the passage.
Of one possible charge Lyon acquitted his success-
ful rival; it had puzzled him that, irrepressible as he
was, he had never got into a mess in the Service. But 35°


THE LIAR
occasion of defending his position with violence,
though only when it was very bad. Then he might
easily be dangerous — then he would hit out and not
care whom he touched. Such moments as those would
test his wife's philosophy — Lyon would have liked
to see her there. In the smoking-room and elsewhere
the company, so far as it was composed of his famil-
iars, had an hilarious protest always at hand; but
among the men who had known him long his big
brush was an old story, so old that they had ceased
to talk about it, and Lyon didn't care, as I have said,
to bring to a point those impatiences that might have
resembled his own.
The oddest thing of all was that neither surprise
nor familiarity prevented the Colonel's being liked;
his largest appeals even to proved satiety passed for an
overflow of life and high spirits — almost of simple
good looks. If he was fond of treating his gallantry
with a flourish he was none the less unmistakeably
gallant. He was a first-rate rider and shot, in spite of
his fund of anecdote illustrating these accomplish-
ments: in short he was very nearly as clever and brave,
and his adventures and observations had been very
nearly as numerous and wonderful, as the list he un-
rolled. His best quality however remained that indis-
criminate sociability which took interest and favour
for granted and about which he bragged least. It
made him cheap, it made him even in a manner vul-
gar ; but it was so contagious that his listener was more
or less on his side as against the probabilities. It was
a private reflexion of Oliver Lyon's that he not only
was mendacious but made any charmed converser feel 352


THE LIAR
as much so by the very action of the charm — of a
certain guilty submission of which no intention of ridi-
cule could yet purge you. In the evening, at dinner
and afterwards, our friend, better placed for observa-
tion than the first night, watched his wife's face to see
if some faint shade or spasm never passed over it. But
she continued to show nothing, and the wonder was
that when he spoke she almost always listened. That
was her pride: she wished not to be even suspected of
not facing the music. Lyon had none the less an im-
portunate vision of a veiled figure coming the next day
in the dusk to certain places to repair the Colonel's
ravages, as the relatives of kleptomaniacs punctually
call at the shops that have suffered from their depreda-
tions.
"I must apologise; of course it wasn't true; I hope
no harm is done; it's only his incorrigible—" oh to
hear that woman's voice in that deep abasement!
Lyon had no harsh design, no conscious wish to prac-
tise on her sensibility or her loyalty; but he did say to
himself that he should have liked to bring her round,
liked to see her show him that a vision of the dignity
of not being married to a mountebank sometimes
haunted her dreams. He even imagined the hour
when, with a burning face, she might ask him not to
take the question up. Then he should be almost con-
soled — he would be magnanimous.
He finished his picture and took his departure, after
having worked in a glow of interest which made him
believe in his success, until he found he had pleased
every one, especially Mr. and Mrs. Ashmore, when he
began to be sceptical. The party at any rate changed: 353


THE LIAR
Colonel and Mrs. Capadose went their way. He was
able to say to himself however that his parting with
Everina wasn't so much an end as a beginning, and
he called on her soon after his return to town. She had
told him the hours she was at home — she seemed to
like him. If she liked him why hadn't she married
him, or at any rate why wasn't she sorry she hadn't?
If she was sorry she concealed it too well. The point
he made of some visible contrition in her on this head
may strike the reader as extravagant, but something
must be allowed so disappointed a man. He didn't
ask much after all; not that she should love him to-day
or that she should allow him to tell her that he loved
her, but only that she should give him some sign she
didn't feel her choice as all gain. Instead of this, for
the present, she contented herself with exhibiting her
small daughter to him. The child was beautiful and
had the prettiest eyes of innocence he had ever seen:
which didn't prevent his wondering if she told horrid
fibs. This idea much occupied and rather darkly
amused him — the picture of the anxiety with which
her mother would watch as she grew older for symp-
toms of the paternal strain. That was a pleasant care
for such a woman as Everina Brant! Did she lie to the
child herself about her father — was that necessary
when she pressed her daughter to her bosom to cover
up his tracks? Did he control himself before the little
girl — so that she mightn't hear him say things she
knew to be other than his account of them? Lyon
scarcely thought that probable: his genius would be
ever too strong for him, and the only guard for Amy
would be in her being too simple for criticism. One 354


THE LIAR
could n't judge yet — she was too young to show.
If she should grow up clever she would be sure to
tread in his steps —a delightful improvement in her
mother's situation! Her little face was not shifty, but
neither was her father's big one; so that proved no-
thing.
Lyon reminded his friends more than once of their
promise that Amy should sit to him, and it was now
only a question of his own leisure. The desire grew in
him to paint the Colonel also — an operation from
which he promised himself a rich private satisfaction.
He would draw him out, he would set him up in that
totality about which he had talked with Sir David, and
none but the initiated would know. They, however,
would rank the picture high, and it would be indeed
six rows deep — a masterpiece of fine characterisa-
tion, of legitimate treachery. He had dreamed for
years of some work that should show the master of the
deeper vision as well as the mere reporter of the items,
and here at last was his subject. It was a pity it wasn't
better, but that wasn't his fault. It was his impres-
sion that already no one "drew" the Colonel in the
social sense more effectively than he, and he did this
not only by instinct but on a plan. There were mo-
ments when he almost winced at the success of his
plan — the poor gentleman went so terribly far. He
would pull up some day, look at his critic between the
eyes and guess he was being played upon — which
would lead to his wife's guessing it also. Not that
Lyon cared much for that however, so long as she
failed to suppose — and she couldn't divine it — that
she was a part of his joke. He formed such a habit 355


THE LIAR
now of going to see her of a Sunday afternoon that he
was angry when she went out of town. This occurred
often, as the couple were great visitors and the Colonel
was always looking for sport, which he liked best when
it could be had at the expense of others. Lyon would
have supposed the general gregarious life, the constant
presence of a gaping "gallery," particularly little to
her taste, for it was naturally in country-houses that
her husband came out strongest. To let him go off
without her, not to see him expose himself — that
ought properly to have been her relief and her nearest
approach to a luxury. She mentioned to her friend in
fact that she preferred staying at home, but she didn't
say it was because in other people's houses she was on
the rack: the reason she gave was that she liked so to
be with the child. It wasn't perhaps criminal to deal
in such "whoppers," but it was damned vulgar: poor
Lyon was delighted when he arrived at that formula.
Certainly some day too he would cross the line — he
would practise the fraud to which his talked " rot" had
the same relation as the experiments of the forger have
to the signed cheque. And in the meantime, yes, he
was vulgar, in spite of his facility, his impunity, his so
remarkably fine person. Twice, by exception, toward
the end of the winter, when he left town for a few days'
hunting, his wife remained at home. Lyon hadn't yet
reached the point of asking himself if the wish not to
miss two of his visits might have had something to do
with this course. That enquiry would perhaps have
been more in place later, when he began to paint her
daughter and she made a rule of coming with her.
But it wasn't in her to give the wrong name, to affect 356


THE LIAR
motives, and Lyon could see she had the maternal
passion in spite of the bad blood in the little girl's
veins.
She came inveterately, though Lyon multiplied the
sittings: Amy was never entrusted to the governess or
the maid. He had knocked off poor old Sir David in
ten days, but the simple face of the child held him and
worried him and gave him endless work. He asked
for sitting after sitting, and it might have struck a
solicitous spectator that he was wearing the little girl
out. He knew better, however, and Mrs. Capadose
also knew: they were present together at the long inter-
missions he gave her, when she left her pose and
roamed about the great studio, amusing herself with
its curiosities, playing with the old draperies and cos-
tumes, having unlimited leave to handle. Then her
mother and their so patient friend — much more pa-
tient than her piano-mistress — sat and talked; he
laid aside his brushes and leaned back in his chair; he
always gave her tea. What Mrs. Capadose couldn't
suspect was the rate at which, during these weeks, he
neglected other orders: women have no faculty of
imagination with regard to a man's work beyond a
vague idea that it doesn't matter. Lyon in fact put off
everything and made high celebrities wait. There
were half-hours of silence, when he plied his brushes,
during which he was mainly conscious that Everina
was sitting there. She easily fell into that if he didn't
insist on talking, and she wasn't embarrassed nor
bored by any lapse of communication. Sometimes she
took up a book — there were plenty of them about;
sometimes, a little way off in her chair, she watched 357


THE LIAR
his progress — though without in the least advising
or correcting — as if she cared for every stroke
that was to contribute to his result. These strokes
were occasionally a little wild; he was thinking so
much more of his heart than of his hand. He wasn't
more embarrassed than she, but he was more agitated:
it was as if in the sittings (for the child too was admir-
ably quiet) something had beautifully settled itself
between them or had already grown — a tacit confid-
ence, an inexpressible secret. He at least felt it that
way, but he after all couldn't be sure she did. What
he wanted her to do for him was very little; it wasn't
even to allow that she was unhappy. She would satisfy
him by letting him know even by some quite silent
sign that she could imagine her happiness with him —
well, more unqualified. Perhaps indeed — his pre-
sumption went so far — that was what she did mean
by contentedly sitting there.


Ill
At last he broached the question of painting the
Colonel: it was now very late in the season — there
would be little time before the common dispersal. He
said they must make the most of it; the great thing
was to begin; then in the autumn, with the resump-
tion of their London life, they could go forward. Mrs.
Capadose objected to this that she really couldn't
consent to accept another present of such value. Lyon
had sacrificed to her the portrait of herself of old — he
knew what they had had the indelicacy to do with it.
Now he had offered her this wondrous memorial of the
child — wondrous it would evidently be when he
should be able to bring it to a finish; a precious pos-
session that, this time, they would cherish for ever.
But his generosity and their indiscretion must stop
there — they couldn't be so tremendously "be-
holden" to him. They couldn't order the picture,
which of course he would understand without her
explaining: it was a luxury beyond their reach, since
they knew the great prices he received. Besides, what
had they ever done — what above all had she ever
done, that he should overload them with benefits?
No, he was too dreadfully good; it was really impos-
sible that Clement should sit. Lyon listened to her
without protest, without interruption, while he bent
forward at his work; and at last returned: "Well, if
you won't take it why not let him sit just for my 359


THE LIAR
own pleasure and profit? Let it be a favour, a service
I ask of him. All the generosity and charity will so be
on your side. It will do me a lot of good to paint him
and the picture will remain in my hands."
"How will it do you a lot of good ?" Mrs. Capadose
asked.
"Why he's such a rare model — such an inter-
esting subject. He has such an expressive face. It
will teach me no end of things."
"Expressive of what?" said Mrs. Capadose.
"Why of his inner man."
"And you want to paint his inner man?"
"Of course I do. That's what a great portrait gives
you, and with a splendid comment on it thrown in for
the money. I shall make the Colonel's a great one.
It will put me up high. So you see my request is
eminently interested."
"How can you be higher than you are?"
"Oh I'm an insatiable climber. So don't stand in
my way," said Lyon.
"Well, everything in him is very noble," Mrs.
Capadose gravely contended.
"Ah trust me to bring everything out!" Lyon re-
turned, feeling a little ashamed of himself.
Mrs. Capadose, before she went, humoured him to
the point of saying that her husband would probably
comply with his invitation; but she added: "Nothing
would induce me to let you pry into me that way!"
"Oh you," her friend laughed —"I could do you
in the dark!"
The Colonel shortly afterwards placed his leisure
at the painter's disposal and by the end of July had 360


THE LIAR
paid him several visits. Lyon was disappointed
neither in the quality of his sitter nor in the degree to
which he himself rose to the occasion; he felt really
confident of producing what he had conceived. He
was in the spirit of it, charmed with his motive and
deeply interested in his problem. The only point that
troubled him was the idea that when he should send
his picture to the Academy he shouldn't be able to
inscribe it in the catalogue under the simple rubric
to which all propriety pointed. He couldn't in short
send in the title as "The Liar" — more was the pity.
However, this little mattered, for he had now deter-
mined to stamp that sense on it as legibly — and to
the meanest intelligence — as it was stamped for his
own vision on the living face. As he saw nothing else
in the Colonel to-day, so he gave himself up to the
joy of "rendering" nothing else. How he did it he
couldn't have told you, but he felt a miracle of method
freshly revealed to him every time he sat down to
work. It was in the eyes and it was in the mouth, it
was in every line of the face and every fact of the
attitude, in the indentation of the chin, in the way
the hair was planted, the moustache was twisted, the
smile came and went, the breath rose and fell. It was
in the way he looked out at a bamboozled world in
short — the way he would look out for ever. There
were half a dozen portraits in Europe that Lyon rated
as supreme; he thought of them always as immortal
things, for they were as perfectly preserved as they
were consummately painted. It was to this small ex-
emplary group that he aspired to attach the canvas
on which he was now engaged. One of the produc361


THE LIAR
tions that helped to compose it was the magnificent
Moroni of the National Gallery — the young tailor
in the white jacket at his board with his shears. The
Colonel was not a tailor, nor was Moroni's model,
unlike many tailors, a liar; the very man, body and
soul, should bloom into life under his hand with just
that assurance of no loss of a drop of the liquor. The
Colonel, as it turned out, liked to sit, and liked to
talk while sitting: which was very fortunate, as his
talk was half the inspiration of his artist. Lyon ap-
plied without mercy his own gift of provocation; he
couldn't possibly have been in a better relation to
him for the purpose. He encouraged, beguiled, ex-
cited him, manifested an unfathomable credulity, and
his own sole lapses were when the Colonel failed, as
he called it, to "act." He had his intermissions, his
hours of sterility, and then Lyon knew that the pict-
ure also drooped. The higher his companion soared,
the more he circled and sang in the blue, the better he
felt himself paint; he only couldn't make the flights
and the evolutions last. He lashed his victim on when
he flagged; his one difficulty was his fear again that
his game might be suspected. The Colonel, how-
ever, was easily beguiled; he basked and expanded
in the fine steady light of the painter's attention. In
this way the picture grew very fast, astonishingly
faster, in spite of its so much greater "importance,"
than the simple-faced little girl's. By the fifth of
August it was pretty well finished: that was the date
of the last sitting the Colonel was for the present able
to give — he was leaving town the next day with his
wife. Lyon was amply content —he saw his way so 362


THE LIAR
clear: he should be able to do at leisure the little
that remained, in respect to which his friend's attend-
ance would be a minor matter. As there was no hurry,
in any case, he would let the thing stand over till his
own return to London, in November, when he should
come back to it with a fresh eye. On the Colonel's
asking him if Everina might have a sight of it next
day, should she find a minute — this being so greatly
her desire — Lyon begged as a special favour that she
would wait: what he had yet to do was small in
amount, but it would make all the difference. This
was the repetition of a proposal Mrs. Capadose had
made on the occasion of his last visit to her, and he
had then recommended her not coming till he should
be himself better pleased. He had really never been,
at a corresponding stage, better pleased; and he
blushed a little for his subtlety.
By the fifth of August the weather was very warm,
and on that day, while the Colonel sat at his usual
free practice Lyon opened for the sake of ventilation
a little subsidiary door which led directly from his
studio into the garden and sometimes served as an
entrance and an exit for models and for visitors of the
humbler sort, and as a passage for canvases, frames,
packing-boxes and other professional gear. The
main entrance was through the house and his own
apartments, and this approach had the charming
effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from
which a winding staircase, happily disposed, dropped
to the wide decorated encumbered room. The view
of this room beneath them, with all its artistic in-
genuities and the objects of value that Lyon had col363


THE LIAR
lected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight
from persons stepping into the gallery. The way from
the garden was plainer and at once more practicable
and more private. Lyon's domain, in Saint John's
Wood, was not vast, but when the door stood open of
a summer's day it offered a glimpse of flowers and
trees, there was a sweetness in the air and you heard
the birds. On this particular morning the side-door
had been found convenient by an unannounced visit-
or, a youngish woman who stood in the room before
the Colonel was aware of her, but whom he was then
the first to see. She was very quiet — she looked
from one of the men to the other. "Oh dear, here's
another!" Lyon exclaimed as soon as his eyes rested
on her. She belonged in fact to the somewhat im-
portunate class of the model in search of employment,
and she explained that she had ventured to come
straight in, that way, because very often when she
went to call upon gentlemen the servants played
her tricks, turned her off and wouldn't take in her
name.
"But how did you get into the garden?" Lyon
asked.
"The gate was open, sir — the servants' gate. The
butcher's cart was there."
"The butcher ought to have closed it," said Lyon.
"Then you don't require me, sir?" the lady con-
tinued.
Lyon continued to paint; he had given her a sharp
look at first, but now his eyes were only for his work.
The Colonel, however, examined her with interest.
She was a person of whom you could scarcely say 364


THE LIAR
whether being young she looked old or old looked
young; she had at any rate clearly rounded several
of the corners of life; she had a face that was rosy,
yet that failed to suggest freshness. She was never-
theless rather pretty and even looked as if at one
time she might have sat for the complexion. She wore
a hat with many feathers, a dress with many bugles,
long black gloves encircled with silver bracelets, and
very bad shoes. There was something about her not
exactly of the governess out of place nor completely
of the actress seeking an engagement, but that sav-
oured of a precarious profession, perhaps even of
a blighted career. She was perceptibly soiled and
tarnished, and after she had been in the room a few
moments the air, or at any rate the nostril, became
acquainted with a vague alcoholic waft. She was
unpractised in the h, and when Lyon at last thanked
her and said he didn't want her— he was doing
nothing for which she could be useful— she replied
in rather a wounded manner: "Well, you know you
'ave 'ad me!"
"I don't remember you," Lyon protested.
"Well, I daresay the people who saw your pictures
do! I haven't much time, but I thought I'd look in."
"I'm much obliged to you."
"If ever you should require me and just send me
a postcard —"
"I never send postcards," said Lyon.
"Oh well, I should value a private letter! Any-
thing to Miss Geraldine, Mortimer Terrace Mews,
Netting 'ill—"
"Very good; I'll remember," said Lyon.
365


THE LIAR
Miss Geraldine lingered. "I thought I'd just stop
on the chance."
"I'm afraid I can't hold out hopes, I'm so busy
with portraits," Lyon continued.
"Yes; I see you are. I wish I was in the gentle-
man's place."
"I'm afraid in that case it wouldn't look like the
gentleman," the Colonel sociably laughed.
"Oh of course it couldn't compare — it wouldn't
be so 'andsome! But I do hate them portraits!" Miss
Geraldine declared. "It's so much bread out of our
mouths."
"Well, there are many who can't paint them,"
Lyon suggested for comfort.
"Oh I've sat to the very first — and only to the
first! There's many that couldn't do anything with-
out me."
"I'm glad you're in such demand." Lyon's amuse-
ment had turned to impatience and he added that he
wouldn't detain her — he would send for her in case
of need.
"Very well; remember it's the Mews — more's
the pity! You don't sit so well as us !" Miss Geraldine
pursued, looking at the Colonel. "If you should re-
quire me, sir—"
"You put him out; you embarrass him," said Lyon.
"Embarrass him, oh gracious!" the visitor cried
with a laugh that diffused a fragrance. "Perhaps
you send postcards, eh ?" she went on to the Colonel;
but she retreated with a wavering step. She passed
out into the garden as she had come.
"How very dreadful — she's drunk!" said Lyon.
366


THE LIAR
He was painting hard, but looked up, checking him-
self: Miss Geraldine, in the open doorway, had thrust
in her head again.
"Yes, I do hate it — that sort of thing!" she cried
with an explosion of mirth which confirmed Lyon's
charge. On which she disappeared.
"What sort of thing — what does she mean?" the
Colonel asked.
"Oh my painting you when I might be painting
her."
"And have you ever painted her?"
"Never in the world; I've never seen her. She's
quite mistaken."
The Colonel just waited; then he remarked: "She
was very pretty — ten years ago."
"I daresay, but she's quite ruined. For me the
least 'drop too much' spoils them; I shouldn't care
for her at all."
"My dear fellow, she's not a model," the Colonel
laughed.
"To-day, no doubt, she's not worthy of the name;
but she has done her time."
"Jamais de la vie I That's all a pretext."
"A pretext?" Lyon pricked up his ears — he
wondered what now would come.
"She didn't want you — she wanted me."
"I noticed she paid you some attention. What
then does she want of you?"
"Oh to do me an ill turn. She hates me — lots of
women do. She's watching me — she follows me."
Lyon leaned back in his chair — without a single
grain of faith. He was all the more delighted with 367


THE LIAR
what he heard and with the Colonel's bright and
candid manner. The story had shot up and bloomed,
from the dropped seed, on the spot. "My dear
Colonel!" he murmured with friendly interest and
commiseration.
"I was vexed when she came in — but I was n't
upset," his sitter continued.
"You concealed it very well if you were."
"Ah when one has been through what I have!
To-day, however, I confess I was half-prepared. I've
noticed her hanging about — she knows my move-
ments. She was near my house this morning — she
must have followed me."
"But who is she then — with such charming
'cheek'?"
"Yes, she has plenty of cheek," said the Colonel;
"but as you observe she was primed. Still, she car-
ried it off as a cool hand. Oh she's a bad 'un! She
isn't a model and never was; no doubt she has known
some of those women and picked up their form. She
had hold of a friend of mine ten years ago — a young
jackanapes who might have been left to be plucked
but whom I was obliged to take an interest in for
family reasons. It's a long story — I had really for-
gotten all about it. She's thirty-seven if she's a day.
I was able to make a diversion and let him get off —
after which I sent her about her business. She knew
it was me she had to thank. She has never forgiven
me — I think she's off her head. Her name isn't
Geraldine at all and I doubt very much if that's her
address."
"Ah what is her name?" Lyon was all participa368


THE LIAR
tion. He had always noted that when once his friend
was launched there was no danger in asking; the
more you asked the more abundantly you were
served.
"It's Pearson — Harriet Pearson; but she used to
call herself Grenadine — was n't that a rum notion?
Grenadine — Geraldine — the jump was easy."
Lyon was charmed with this flow of facility, and his
interlocutor went on: "I hadn't thought of her for
years —I had quite lost sight of her. I don't know
what her idea is, but practically she's harmless. As
I came in I thought I saw her a little way up the road.
She must have found out I come here and have ar-
rived before me. I dare say — or rather I'm sure—
she's waiting for me there now."
"Hadn't you better have protection?" Lyon
asked with amusement.
"The best protection's five shillings — I'm willing
to go that length. Unless indeed she has a bottle of
vitriol. But they only throw vitriol on the fellows who
have 'undone' them, and I never undid her — I told
her the first time I saw her that it wouldn't do. Oh
if she's there we '11 walk a little way together and talk
it over, and, as I say, I '11 go as far as five shillings."
"Well," said Lyon, "I'll contribute another five."
He felt this little to pay for what he was getting.
That entertainment was interrupted, however, for
the time, by the Colonel's departure. Lyon hoped
for some sequel to match — a report, by note, of the
next scene in the drama as his friend had met it, but
this genius apparently didn't operate with the pen.
At any rate he left town without writing — they had 369


THE LIAR
taken a tryst for three months later. Oliver Lyon
always passed the holidays in the same way; during
the first weeks he paid a visit to his elder brother,
the happy possessor, in the south of England, of a
rambling old house with formal gardens, in which he
delighted, and then he went abroad — usually to
Italy or Spain. This year he carried out his custom
after taking a last look at his all but finished work
and feeling as nearly pleased with it as decency per-
mitted, the translation of the idea by the hand ap-
pearing always to him at the best a pitiful compro-
mise. One yellow afternoon in the country, as he
smoked his pipe on one of the old terraces, he was
taken with a fancy for another look at what he had
lately done, and with that in particular of doing two
or three things more to it: he had been much haunted
with this unrest while he lounged there. The pro-
vocation was not to be resisted, and though he was
at any rate so soon to be back in London he was un-
able to brook delay. Five minutes with his view of
the Colonel would be enough — it would clear up
questions that hummed in his brain; so that the next
morning, to give himself this luxury, he took the train
for town. He sent no word in advance; he would
lunch at his club and probably return into Sussex by
the 5.45.
In Saint John's Wood the tide of human life flows
at no time very fast, and in the first days of Septem-
ber Lyon found mere desolation in the straight sunny
roads where the little plastered garden-walls, with
their incommunicative doors, looked feebly Oriental.
There was definite stillness in his own house, to which 37°


THE LIAR
he admitted himself by his pass-key, it being a matter
of conscience with him sometimes to take his servants
unawares. The good woman set in authority over
them and who cumulated the functions of cook and
housekeeper was, however, quickly summoned by his
step, and — as he cultivated frankness of intercourse
with his domestics — received him without the con-
fusion of surprise. He reassured her as to any other
effect of unpreparedness — he had come up but for a
few hours and should be busy in the studio. She
announced that he was just in time to see a lady and a
gentleman who were there at the moment — they had
arrived five minutes before. She had told them he
was absent but they said it was all right; they only
wanted to look at a picture and would be very careful
of everything. "I hope it's all right, sir," this in-
formant concluded. "The gentleman says he's a sit-
ter and he gave me his name — rather an odd name;
I think it's military. The lady's a very fine lady, sir;
at any rate there they are."
"Oh it's all right" — Lyon read the identity of his
visitors. The good woman couldn't know, having
when he was at home so little to do with the comings
and goings; his man, who showed people in and out,
had accompanied him to the country. He was a good
deal surprised at the advent of Mrs. Capadose, who
knew how little he wished her to see the portrait unfin-
ished, but it was a familiar truth to him that she was
a woman of a high spirit. Besides, perhaps the lady
wasn't Everina; the Colonel might well have brought
some inquisitive friend, a person who perhaps wanted
a portrait of her husband. What were they doing in 371


THE LIAR
thing could so prevail. Mrs. Capadose flung herself
away from her husband — she dropped into the near-
est chair, leaned against a table, buried her face in her
arms. The sound of her woe diminished, but she
shuddered there as if overwhelmed with anguish and
shame. Her husband stood a moment glaring at the
picture, then went to her, bent over her, took hold of
her again, soothed her. "What is it, darling—what
the devil is it?"
Lyon fairly drank in her answer. "It's cruel— oh
it's too cruel!"
"Damn him, damn him, damn him!" the Colonel
repeated.
"It's all there — it's all there!" Mrs. Capadose
went on.
"Hang it, what's all there?"
"Everything there oughtn't to be — everything he
has seen. It's too dreadful!"
"Everything he has seen? Why, ain't I a good-
looking fellow? I '11 be bound to say he has made me
handsome."
Mrs. Capadose had sprung up again; she had
darted another glance at the painted betrayal. "Hand-
some? Hideous, hideous! Not that — never, never!"
"Not what, in heaven's name?" the Colonel al-
most shouted. Lyon could see his flushed bewildered
face."What he has made of you — what you know! He
knows — he has seen. Every one will, every one know
and see. Fancy that thing in the Academy!"
"You're going wild, darling; but if you hate it so it
needn't go," the poor branded man declared.
374


THE LIAR
"Ah he'll send it — it's so good! Come away—
come away!" Mrs. Capadose wailed, seizing her hus-
band.
"It's so good?" the victim cried.
"Come away — come away," she only repeated,
and she turned toward the staircase that ascended to
the gallery.
"Not that way — not through the house in the state
you're in," Lyon heard her companion object.
"This way — we can pass," he added; and he drew
his wife to the small door that opened into the garden.
It was bolted, but he pushed the bolt and opened the
door. She passed out quickly, but he stood there look-
ing back into the room. "Wait for me a moment!"
he cried out to her; and with an excited stride he re-
entered the studio. He came up to the picture again —
again he covered it with his baffled glare. "Damn
him — damn him — damn him!" he broke out once
more. Yet it wasn't clear to Lyon whether this male-
diction had for object the guilty original or the guilty
painter. The Colonel turned away and moved about
as if looking for something; Lyon for the moment
wondered at his intention; saying to himself the next,
however, below his breath: "He's going to do it a
harm!" His first impulse was to raise a preventive
cry, but he paused with the sound of Everina Brant's
sobs still in his ears. The Colonel found what he was
looking for — found it among some odds and ends on
a small table and strode back with it to the easel. At
one and the same moment Lyon recognised the object
seized as a small Eastern dagger and saw that he had
plunged it into the canvas. Animated as with a sudden 375


THE LIAR
fury and exercising a rare vigour of hand, he dragged
the instrument down — Lyon knew it to have no very
fine edge — making a long and abominable gash.
Then he plucked it out and dashed it again several
times into the face of the likeness, exactly as if he were
stabbing a human victim: it had the most portentous
effect — that of some act of prefigured or rehearsed
suicide. In a few seconds more the Colonel had tossed
the dagger away — he looked at it in this motion as
for the sight of blood — and hurried out of the place
with a bang of the door.
The strangest part of all was — as will doubtless
appear — that Oliver Lyon lifted neither voice nor
hand to save his picture. The point is that he didn't
feel as if he were losing it or didn't care if he were, so
much more was he conscious of gaining a certitude.
His old friend was ashamed of her husband, and he
had made her so, and he had scored a great success,
even at the sacrifice of his precious labour. The reve-
lation so excited him — as indeed the whole scene did
— that when he came down the steps after the Colo-
nel had gone he trembled with his happy agitation; he
was dizzy and had to sit down a moment. The por-
trait had a dozen jagged wounds — the Colonel liter-
ally had hacked himself to death. Lyon left it there
where it grimaced, never touched it, scarcely looked
at it; he only walked up and down his studio with a
sense of such achieved success as nothing finished and
framed, varnished and delivered and paid for had ever
given him. At the end of this time his good woman
came to offer him luncheon; there was a passage under
the staircase from the offices.
376


THE LIAR
"Ah the lady and gentleman have gone, sir? I
didn't hear them."
"Yes; they went by the garden."
But she had stopped, staring at the picture on the
easel. "Gracious, how you 'ave served it, sir!"
Lyon imitated the Colonel. "Yes, I cut it up — in
a fit of disgust."
"Mercy, after all your trouble! Because they
were n't pleased, sir?"
"Yes; they weren't pleased."
"Well, they must be very grand! Blest if I would!"
"Have it chopped up; it will do to light fires,"
Lyon magnificently said.
He returned to the country by the 3.30 and a few
days later passed over to France. There was some-
thing he found himself looking for during these two
months on the Continent; he had an expectation—
he could hardly have said of what; of some charac-
teristic sign or other on the Colonel's part. Wouldn't
he write, wouldn't he explain, wouldn't he take for
granted Lyon had discovered the way he had indeed
been "served" and hold it only decent to show some
form of pity for his mystification? Would he plead
guilty or would he repudiate suspicion? The latter
course would be difficult, would really put his genius
to the test, in view of the ready and responsible wit-
ness who had admitted the visitors the day of the
ravage and would establish the connexion between
their presence and that perpetration. Would the
Colonel proffer some apology or some amends, or
would any word from him be only a further expres-
sion of that exasperated wonder which our friend 377


THE LIAR
had seen his wife so suddenly and so fatally com-
municate? He would have either to take oath that he
hadn't touched the picture or to admit that he had,
and in either case would be at costs for a difficult ver-
sion. Lyon was impatient for this probably remark-
able story, and as no letter came was disappointed at
the failure of the exhibition. His impatience however
was much greater in respect to Mrs. Capadose's in-
evitable share in the report, if report there was to be;
for certainly that would be the real test, would show
how far she would go for her husband on the one side
or for himself on the other. He could scarcely wait
to see what line she would take — whether she would
simply adopt the Colonel's, whatever it might be. It
would have met his impatience most to draw her out
without waiting, to get an idea in advance. He wrote
to her, to this end, from Venice, in the tone of their
established friendship, asking for news, telling her of
his movements, hoping for their reunion in London
and not saying a word about the picture. Day fol-
lowed day, after the time, and he received no answer;
on which he reflected that she couldn't trust herself
to write— was still too deeply ruffled, too discon-
certed, by his "betrayal." Her husband had espoused
her resentment and she had espoused the action he
had taken in consequence of it; the rupture was there-
fore complete and everything at an end. Lyon was
frankly rueful over this prospect, at the same time
that he thought it deplorable such charming people
should have put themselves so grossly in the wrong.
He was at last cheered, though little further enlight-
ened, by the arrival of a letter, brief but breathing 378


THE LIAR
good humour and hinting neither at a grievance nor
at a bad conscience. The most interesting part of it
to him was the postscript, which ran as follows: "I
have a confession to make to you. We were in town
for a couple of days, early in September, and I took
the occasion to defy your authority: this was very bad of
me but I couldn't help it. I made Clement take me
to your studio — I wanted so dreadfully to see what
you had done with him, your wishes to the contrary
notwithstanding. We made your servants let us in
and I took a good look at the picture. It is really
wonderful!" "Wonderful" was non-committal, but
at least with this letter there was no rupture.
The third day after his return was a Sunday, so
that he could go and ask Mrs. Capadose for luncheon.
She had given him in the spring a general invitation
to do so and he had several times profited by it. These
had been the occasions, before his sittings, when he
saw the Colonel most familiarly. Directly after the
meal his host disappeared (went out, as he said,
to call on his women) and the second half-hour was
the best, even when there were other people. Now,
in the first days of December, Lyon had the luck to
find the pair alone, without even Amy, who appeared
but little in public. They were in the drawing-room,
waiting for the repast to be announced, and as soon
as he came in the Colonel broke out: "My dear fel-
low, I'm delighted to see you! I'mso keen to begin
again."
"Oh do go on; it's so beautiful," Mrs. Capadose
said as she gave him her hand.
Lycn looked from one to the other; he didn't know 379


THE LIAR
what he had expected, but he hadn't expected this.
"Ah then you think I've got something?"
"You've got everything." And Mrs. Capadose
smiled from her golden-brown eyes.
"She wrote you of our little crime?" her husband
asked. "She dragged me there — I had to go." Lyon
wondered for a moment whether he meant by their
little crime the assault on the canvas; but his friend's
next words made this impossible. "You know I like
to sit—you want me animated, and it leaves me so
to wag my tongue. And just now I've time."
"You must remember how near I had got to the
end," Lyon returned.
"So you had. More's the pity. I should like you
to begin again."
"My dear fellow, I shall have to begin again!"
laughed the painter with his eyes on Mrs. Capadose.
She didn't meet them — she had got up to ring for
luncheon. "The picture has been smashed," Lyon
continued.
"Smashed? Ah what did you do that for?" cried
Everina, standing there before him in all her clear
rich beauty. Now that she did look at him she was
impenetrable.
"I did n't — I found it so — with a dozen holes
punched in it!"
"I say!" cried the Colonel — "what a jolly shame!"
Lyon took him in with a wide smile. "I hope you
didn't go for it?"
"Is it done for ?" the Colonel earnestly asked. He
was as brightly true as his wife and he looked simply
as if Lyon's question couldn't be serious. "For the 380


THE LIAR
she would have guessed it. Lyon didn't for an instant
believe poor Miss Geraldine to have been hovering
about his door, nor had the account given by the
Colonel the summer before of his relations with this
lady affected him as in the least convincing. Lyon
had never seen her till the day she planted herself
in his studio, but he knew her and classified her as if
he had made her. He was acquainted with the Lon-
don model in all her feminine varieties — in every
phase of her development and every step of her decay.
When he entered his house that September morning
just after the arrival of his two friends there had been
no symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of
Miss Geraldine's reappearance. That fact had been
fixed in his mind by his recollecting the vacancy of the
prospect when his cook told him that a lady and a
gentleman were in his studio: he had wondered there
was neither carriage nor cab at his door. Then he had
reflected that they would have come by the under-
ground railway; he was near the Marlborough Road
station and he knew the Colonel, repeating his pil-
grimage so often, habitually made use of that con-
venience. "How in the world did she get in?" He
addressed the question to his companions indifferently.
"Let us go down to luncheon," said Mrs. Capa-
dose, passing out of the room.
"We went by the garden—without troubling
your servant — I wanted to show my wife." Lyon
followed his hostess with her husband, and the Colonel
stopped him at the top of the stairs. "My dear fellow,
I cant have been guilty of the folly of not fastening
the door?"
382


THE LIAR
"I'm sure I don't know, Colonel," Lyon said as
they went down. "It was a very determined hand
that did the deed — in the spirit of a perfect wild-cat."
"Well, she is a wild-cat — confound her! That's
why I wanted to get him away from her."
"But I don't understand her motive."
"Well, she's practically off her head — and she
hates me. That was her motive."
"But she doesn't hate me, my dear fellow!" Lyon
amusedly urged.
"She hated the picture — don't you remember
she said so? The more portraits, the less employment
for such as her."
"Yes; but if she's not really the model she pre-
tends to be, how can that hurt her ?" Lyon asked.
The question baffled the Colonel an instant — but
only an instant. "Ah she's so bad she goes it blind.
She doesn't know where she is."
They passed into the dining-room, where Mrs. Capadose was taking her place. "It's too low, it's
too horrid!" she said. "You see the fates are against
you. Providence won't let you be so disinterested —
throwing off masterpieces for nothing."
"Did you see the woman?" Lyon put to her with
something like a sternness he couldn't mitigate.
She seemed not to feel it, or not to heed it if she did.
"There was a person, not far from your door, whom
Clement called my attention to. He told me some-
thing about her, but we were going the other way."
"And do you think she did it?"
"How can I tell? If she did she was mad, poor
wretch."
383


THE LIAR
"I should like very much to get hold of her," said
Lyon. This was a false plea for the truth: he had no
desire for any further conversation with Miss Gerald-
ine. He had exposed his friends to his own view,
but without wish to expose them to others, and least
of all to themselves.
"Oh depend upon it she'll never show again.
You're all right now!" the Colonel guaranteed.
"But I remember her address — Mortimer Ter-
race Mews, Notting Hill."
"Oh that's pure humbug. There is n't any such
place."
"Lord, what a practised deceiver!" said Lyon.
"Is there any one else you suspect?" his host went
on.
"Not a creature."
"And what do your servants say?"
"They say it wasn't them, and I reply that I never
said it was. That's about the substance of our in-
terviews."
"And when did they discover the havoc?"
"They never discovered it at all. I noticed it first
— when I came back."
"Well, she could easily have stepped in," said the
subject of Miss Geraldine's pursuit. "Don't you re-
member how she turned up that day like the clown
in the ring?"
"Yes, yes; she could have done the job in three
seconds, except that the picture wasn't out."
"Ah my dear fellow," the Colonel groaned, "don't
utterly curse me! — but of course I dragged it out."
"You didn't put it back?" Lyon tragically cried.
38+


THE LIAR
"Ah Clement, Gement, did n't I tell you to?" Mrs.
Capadose reproachfully wailed.
The Colonel almost howled for compunction; he
covered his face with his hands. His wife's words
were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his
whole vision crumble — his theory that she had se-
cretly kept herself true. Even to her old lover she
wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he
knew how strange he must have looked. He attempted
some platitude about spilled milk and the folly of
crying over it — he tried to turn the talk to other
things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered
how it pressed upon them. He wondered all sorts of
things: whether they guessed he disbelieved them—
that he had seen them of course they would never
guess; whether they had arranged their story in ad-
vance or it was only an inspiration of the moment;
whether she had resisted, protested, when the Colonel
proposed it to her, and then had been borne down by
him; whether in short she didn't loathe herself as she
sat there. The cruelty, the cowardice of fastening
their unholy act upon the wretched woman struck
him as monstrous — no less monstrous indeed than
the levity that could make them run the risk of her
giving them, in her righteous indignation, the lie.
Of course that risk could only exculpate her and not
inculpate them — the probabilities protected them
so perfectly; and what the Colonel counted on—
what he would have counted upon the day he de-
livered himself, after first seeing her, at the studio, if
he had thought about the matter then at all and not
spoken from the pure spontaneity of his genius — 385


THE LIAR
was simply that Miss Geraldine must have vanished
for ever into her native unknown. Lyon wanted so
much to cut loose, in his disgust, that when after a
little Mrs. Capadose said to him "But can nothing
be done, can't the picture be repaired? You know
they do such wonders in that way now," he only made
answer: "I don't know, I don't care, it's all over,
rien parlons plus!" Her hypocrisy revolted him.
And yet by way of plucking off the last veil of her
shame he broke out to her again, shortly afterwards:
"And you did like it, really?" To which she re-
turned, looking him straight in his face, without a
blush, a pallor, an evasion: "Oh chergrand mditre, I
loved it!" Truly her husband had trained her well.
After that Lyon said no more, and his companions
forbore temporarily to insist, like people of tact and
sympathy aware that the odious accident had made
him sore.
When they quitted the table the Colonel went away
without coming upstairs; but Lyon returned to the
drawing-room with his hostess, remarking to her
however on the way that he could remain but a mo-
ment. He spent that moment — it prolonged itself
a little — standing with her before the chimney-piece.
She neither sat down nor asked him to; her manner
betrayed some purpose of going out. Yes, her hus-
band had trained her well; yet Lyon dreamed for a
moment that now he was alone with her she would
perhaps break down, retract, apologise, confide, say
to him: "My dear old friend, forgive this hideous
comedy — you understand!" And then how he
would have loved her and pitied her, guarded her, 386


THE LIAR
helped her always! If she weren't ready to do some-
thing of that sort why had she treated him so as a
dear old friend; why had she let him for months
suppose certain things — or almost; why had she
come to his studio day after day to sit near him on
the pretext of her child's portrait, as if she liked to
think what might have been? Why had she come so
near a tacit confession if she wasn't willing to go an
inch further? And she wasn't willing — she wasn't;
he could see that as he lingered there. She moved
about the room a little, rearranging two or three ob-
jects on the tables, but she did nothing more. Sud-
denly he said to her: "Which way was she going when
you came out?"
"She — the woman we saw?"
"Yes, your husband's strange friend. It's a clue
worth following." He didn't want to scare or to
shake her; he only wanted to communicate the im-
pulse that would make her say: "Ah spare me—■
and spare him! There was no such person."
Instead of this Everina replied: "She was going
away from us — she crossed the road. We were com-
ing toward the station."
"And did she appear to recognise the Colonel—
did she look round?"
"Yes; she looked round, but I didn't notice much.
A hansom came along and we got into it. It wasn't
till then that Clement told me who she was: I remem-
ber he said that she was there for no good. I suppose
we ought to have gone back."
"Yes; you'd have saved the picture."
For a moment she said nothing; then she smiled.
387


THE LIAR
"For you, cher maitre, I'm very sorry. But you must
remember I possess the original!"
At this he turned away. "Well, I must go," he
said; and he left her without any other farewell and
made his way out of the house. As he went slowly
up the street the sense came back to him of that first
glimpse of her he had had at Stayes — of how he
had seen her gaze across the table at her husband.
He stopped at the corner, looking vaguely up and
down. He would never go back — he couldn't. Nor
should he ever sound her abyss. He believed in her
absolute straightness where she and her affairs alone
might be concerned, but she was still in love with the
man of her choice, and since she couldn't redeem
him she would adopt and protect him. So he had
trained her.


THE TWO FACES
"He wasn't sure you'd see any one."
"I don't see 'any one,' but I see individuals."
"That's just it — and sometimes you don't see
them."
"Do you mean ever because of you?" she asked as
she touched into place a tendril of hair. "That's
just his impertinence, as to which I shall speak to
him."
"Don't," said Shirley Sutton. "Never notice any-
thing."
"That's nice advice from you," she laughed, "who
notice everything!"
"Ah but I speak of nothing."
She looked at him a moment. "You're still more
impertinent than Bates. You'll please not budge,"
she went on.
"Really? I must sit him out?" he continued as,
after a minute, she had not again spoken — only
glancing about, while she changed her place, partly
for another look at the glass and partly to see if she
could improve her seat. What she felt was rather
more than, clever and charming though she was, she
could hide. "If you're wondering how you seem I
can tell you. Awfully cool and easy."
She gave him another stare. She was beautiful and
conscious. "And if you're wondering how you
seem —"
"Oh I'm not!" he laughed from before the fire.
"I always perfectly know."
"How you seem," she retorted, "is as if you
did n't!"
Once more for a little he watched her. "You're ... 392


THE TWO FACES
looking lovely for him — extraordinarily lovely,
within the marked limits of your range. But that's
enough. Don't be clever.""Then who will be?"
"There you are!" he sighed with amusement."Do you know him?" she asked as, through the
door left open by Bates, they heard steps on the land-
ing.
Sutton had to think an instant, and produced a
"No" just as Lord Gwyther was again announced,
which gave an unexpectedness to the greeting offered
him a moment later by this personage — a young
man, stout and smooth and fresh, but not at all shy,
who, after the happiest rapid passage with Mrs.
Grantham, put out a hand with a straight free "How
d'ye do?"
"Mr. Shirley Sutton," Mrs. Grantham explained.
"Oh yes," said her second visitor quite as if he
knew; which, as he couldn't have known, had for her
first the interest of confirming a perception that his
lordship would be — no, not at all, in general, em-
barrassed, only was now exceptionally and especially
agitated. As it is, for that matter, with Sutton's total
impression that we are particularly and almost exclu-
sively concerned, it may be further mentioned that he
was not less clear as to the really handsome way in
which the young man kept himself together and little
by little — though with all proper aid indeed —finally
found his feet. All sorts of things, for the twenty
minutes, occurred to Sutton, though one of them was
certainly not that it would, after all, be better he
should go. One of them was that their hostess was 393


THE TWO FACES
you would be kind. But it wasn't at Stuttgart; it was
over there, but quite in the country. We should have
managed it in England but that her mother naturally
wished to be present, yet wasn't in health to come.
So it was really, you see, a sort of little hole-and-cor-
ner German affair."
This didn't in the least check Mrs. Grantham's
claim, but it started a slight anxiety. "Will she be —
a — then German?"
Sutton knew her to know perfectly what Lady
Gwyther would "be," but he had by this time, while
their friend explained, his independent interest. "Oh
dear no! My father-in-law has never parted with the
proud birthright of a Briton. But his wife, you see,
holds an estate in Wiirtemberg from her mother,
Countess Kremnitz, on which, with the awful condi-
tion of his English property, you know, they've found
it for years a tremendous saving to live. So that
though Valda was luckily born at home she has prac-
tically spent her life over there."
"Oh I see." Then, after a slight pause, "Is Valda
her pretty name?" Mrs. Grantham asked.
"Well," said the young man, only wishing, in his
candour, it was clear, to be drawn out —"well, she
has, in the manner of her mother's people, about
thirteen; but that's the one we generally use."
Mrs. Grantham waited but an instant. "Then
may / generally use it?"
"It would be too charming of you; and nothing
would give her — as I assure you nothing would give
me — greater pleasure." Lord Gwyther quite glowed
with the thought.
395


THE TWO FACES
"Then I think that instead of coming alone you
might have brought her to see me."
"It's exactly what," he instantly replied, "I came
to ask your leave to do." He explained that for the
moment Lady Gwyther was not in town, having as
soon as she arrived gone down to Torquay to put in
a few days with one of her aunts, also her godmother,
to whom she was an object of great interest. She
had seen no one yet, and no one — not that that mat-
tered — had seen her; she knew nothing whatever of
London and was awfully frightened at facing it and at
what (however little) might be expected of her. "She
wants some one," he said, "some one who knows
the whole thing, don't you see? and who's thoroughly
kind and clever, as you would be, if I may say so, to
take her by the hand." It was at this point and on
these words that the eyes of Lord Gwyther's two audit-
ors inevitably and wonderfully met. But there was
nothing in the way he kept it up to show he caught
the encounter. "She wants, if I may tell you so, a real
friend for the great labyrinth; and asking myself what
I could do to make things ready for her, and who
would be absolutely the best woman in London—"
"You thought naturally of me?" Mrs. Grantham
had listened with no sign but the faint flash just
noted; now, however, she gave him the full light of
her expressive face — which immediately brought
Shirley Sutton, looking at his watch, once more to
his feet.
"She is the best woman in London!" He ad-
dressed himself with a laugh to the other visitor, but
offered his hand in farewell to their hostess.396


THE TWO FACES
"You're going?"
"I must," he said without scruple.
"Then we do meet at dinner?"
"I hope so." On which, to take leave, he returned
with interest to Lord Gwyther the friendly clutch he
had a short time before received.


II
They did meet at dinner, and if they were not, as it
happened, side by side, they made that up afterwards
in the happiest angle of a drawing-room that offered
both shine and shadow and that was positively much
appreciated, in the circle in which they moved, for the
favourable "corners" created by its shrewd mistress.
Mrs. Grantham's face, charged with something pro-
duced in it by Lord Gwyther's visit, had been with
him so constantly for the previous hours that, when
she instantly challenged him on his "treatment" of
her in the afternoon, he was on the point of naming
it as his reason for not having remained with her.
Something new had quickly come into her beauty;
he couldn't as yet have said what, nor whether on
the whole to its advantage or its loss. Till he should
see this clearer, at any rate he would say nothing; so
that he found with sufficient presence of mind a better
excuse. If in short he had in defiance of her particular
request left her alone with Lord Gwyther it was
simply because the situation had suddenly turned
so exciting that he had fairly feared the contagion of
it — the temptation of its making him, most impro-
perly, put in his word.
They could now talk of these things at their ease.
Other couples, ensconced and scattered, enjoyed the
same privilege, and Sutton had more and more the
profit, such as it was, of feeling that his interest in 398


THE TWO FACES
Mrs. Grantham had become — what was the luxury
of so high a social code — an acknowledged and pro-
tected relation. He knew his London well enough to
know that he was on the way to be regarded as her
main source of consolation for the trick Lord Gwyther
had several months before publicly played her. Many
persons had not held that, by the high social code in
question, his lordship could have "reserved the right"
to turn up that way, from one day to another, en-
gaged to be married. For himself London took, with
its short cuts and its cheap psychology, an immense
deal for granted. To his own sense he was never —could in the nature of things never be — any man's
"successor." Just what had constituted the pre-
decessorship of other men was apparently that they
had been able to make up their mind. He, worse
luck, was at the mercy of her face, and more than
ever at the mercy of it now, which meant moreover
not that it made a slave of him, but that it made, dis-
concertingly, a sceptic. It was the absolute perfec-
tion of the handsome, but things had a way of coming
into it. "I felt," he said, "that you were there to-
gether at a point at which you had a right to the ease
the absence of a listener would give. I was sure that
when you made me promise to stay you hadn't
guessed —"
"That he could possibly have come to me on such
an extraordinary errand? No, of course I hadn't
guessed. Who would? But didn't you see how little
I was upset by it?"
Sutton demurred. Then with a smile: "I think he
saw how little."
399


THE TWO FACES
"You yourself did n't then?
He again held back, but not, after all, to answer.
"He was wonderful, wasn't he?"
"I think he was," she returned after a moment.
To which she added: "Why did he pretend that way
he knew you?"
"He didn't pretend. He somehow felt on the spot
that I was 'in it.'" Sutton had found this afterwards
and found it to represent a reality. "It was an ef-
fusion of cheer and hope. He was so glad to see me
there and to find you happy."
"Happy?"
"Happy. Aren't you?"
"Because of you?"
"Well — according to the impression he received
as he came in."
"That was sudden then," she asked, "and unex-
pected?"
Her companion thought. "Prepared in some de-
gree, but confirmed by the sight of us, there together,
so awfully jolly and sociable over your fire."
Mrs. Grantham turned this round. "If he knew I
was 'happy' then — which, by the way, is none of
his business, nor of yours either — why in the world
did he come?"
"Well, for good manners, and for his idea," said
Sutton.
She took it in, appearing to have no hardness of
rancour that could bar discussion. "Do you mean
by his idea his proposal that I should grandmother
his wife? And if you do is the proposal your reason
for calling him wonderful?"
400


THE TWO FACES
you haven't? Precisely. But in spite of not wanting
to appear to have understood too much —"
"I may still be depended on to do what I can?
Quite certainly. You'll see what I may still be de-
pended on to do." And she moved away.


Ill
It was not, doubtless, that there had been anything
in their rather sharp separation at that moment to
sustain or prolong the interruption; yet it definitely
befell that, circumstances aiding, they practically
failed to meet again before the great party at Bur-
beck. This occasion was to gather in some thirty
persons from a certain Friday to the following Mon-
day, and it was on the Friday that Sutton went down.
He had known in advance that Mrs. Grantham was
to be there, and this perhaps, during the interval of
hindrance, had helped him a little to be patient. He
had before him the certitude of a real full cup — two
days brimming over with the sight of her. He found,
however, on his arrival that she was not yet in the
field, and presently learned that her place would be
in a small contingent that was to join the party on
the morrow. This knowledge he extracted from Miss
Banker, who was always the first to present herself
at any gathering that was to enjoy her, and whom
moreover — partly on that very account — the wary
not less than the speculative were apt to hold them-
selves well-advised to engage with at as early as pos-
sible a stage of the business. She was stout red rich
mature universal — a massive much-fingered vol-
ume, alphabetical wonderful indexed, that opened
of itself at the right place. She opened for Sutton
instinctively at G , which happened to be re404


THE TWO FACES
markably convenient. "What she's really waiting
over for is to bring down Lady Gwyther."
"Ah the Gwythers are coming?"
"Yes; caught, through Mrs. Grantham, just in time.
She'll be the feature — everyone wants to see her."
Speculation and wariness met and combined at
this moment in Shirley Sutton. "Do you mean — a
—Mrs. Grantham?"
"Dear no! Poor little Lady Gwyther, who, but
just arrived in England, appears now literally for the
first time in her life in any society whatever, and
whom (don't you know the extraordinary story? you
ought to — you f) she, of all people, has so wonder-
fully taken up. It will be quite — here — as if she
were 'presenting' her."
Sutton of course took in more things than even
appeared. "I never know what I ought to know; I
only know, inveterately, what I oughtn't. So what is
the extraordinary story?"
"You really haven't heard —?"
"Really," he replied without winking.
"It happened indeed but the other day," said
Miss Banker, "yet every one's already wondering.
Gwyther has thrown his wife on her mercy — but
I won't believe you if you pretend to me you don't
know why he shouldn't."
Sutton asked himself then what he could pretend.
"Do you mean because she's merciless?"
She hesitated. "If you don't know perhaps I
oughtn't to tell you."
He liked Miss Banker and found just the right tone
to plead. "Do tell me."
405


THE TWO FACES
who's proud, won't like her the better for it. And I
don't see," Miss Banker went on, "that her pretti-
ness was enough — a mere little feverish frightened
freshness; what did he see in her ?— to be so blasted.
It has been done with an atrocity of art—"
"That supposes the dressmaker then also a devil?"
"Oh your London women and their dressmakers!"
Miss Banker laughed.
"But the face — the face!" Sutton woefully re-
peated.
"May's?"
"The little girl's. It's exquisite.""Exquisite?"
"For unimaginable pathos."
"Oh!" Miss Banker dropped.
"She has at last begun to see." Sutton showed
again how far he saw. "It glimmers upon her inno-
cence, she makes it dimly out — what has been done
with her. She's even worse this evening — the way,
my eye, she looked at dinner! — than when she came.
Yes"— he was confident — "it has dawned (how
couldn't it, out of all of you ?) and she knows."
"She ought to have known before!" Miss Banker
intelligently sighed.
"No; she wouldn't in that case have been so beau-
tiful."
"Beautiful?" cried Miss Banker; "overloaded like
a monkey in a show!"
"The face, yes; which goes to the heart. It's that
that makes it," said Shirley Sutton. "And it's that"
— he thought it out — "that makes the other."
"I see. Conscious?"
4IZ


THE TWO FACES
"Horrible!"
"You take it hard," said Miss Banker.
Lord Gwyther, just before she spoke, had come in
sight and now was near them. Sutton on this, appear-
ing to wish to avoid him, reached, before answering
his companion's observation, a door that opened
close at hand. "So hard," he replied from that point,
"that I shall be off to-morrow morning."
"And not see the rest?" she called after him.
But he had already gone, and Lord Gwyther,
arriving, amiably took up her question. "The rest of
what?"
Miss Banker looked him well in the eyes. "Of
Mrs. Grantham's clothes."