【有声英语文学名著】螺丝在拧紧（8）

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by Henry James

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 extravagant¹ fancies. We were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else — difficult indeed as that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious² experience, was least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her perfectly³ in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if I had “made it up,” I came to be able to give, of each of the persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their special marks — a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognized 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 encountered her on the ground of a probability that with recurrence⁴ — for recurrence we took for granted — I should get used to my danger, distinctly professing⁵ that my personal exposure had suddenly become the least of my discomforts⁶. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought a little ease.

On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively⁷ cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, plunged⁸ afresh into Flora⁹’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 speculation¹⁰ and then had accused me to my face of having “cried.” I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally¹¹ — for the time, at all events — rejoice, under this fathomless¹² charity, that they had not entirely¹³ disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature¹⁴ cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure¹⁵ my judgment¹⁶ and, so far as might be, my agitation¹⁷. I couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose — as I did there, over and over, in the small hours — that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their fragrant¹⁸ 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 subtlety¹⁹ that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion²⁰, 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 that I needed once more to describe the portentous²¹ little activity by which she sought to divert my attention — the perceptible increase of movement, the greater intensity²² of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp²³.

Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to asseverate²⁴ to my friend that I was certain — which was so much to the good — that Iat least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind — I scarce know what to call it — to invoke²⁵ such further aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion — for the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help — I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. “I don’t believe anything so horrible,” I recollect²⁶ 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 scrap²⁷, come! — to get out of you. What was it you had in mind when, in our distress²⁸, before Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you said, under my insistence²⁹, that you didn’t pretend for him that he had not literally EVER been ‘bad’? He has NOT literally ‘ever,’ in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable³⁰ little prodigy³¹ of delightful³², lovable 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 dreadfully austere³³ inquiry³⁴, but levity³⁵ was not our note, and, at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished³⁶ us to separate I had got my answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticize the propriety³⁷, to hint at the incongruity³⁸, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture³⁹ to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that SHE liked to see young gentlemen not forget their station.

I pressed again, of course, at this. “You 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 WOULDN’T!” she could still impress upon me. “I was sure, at any rate,” she added, “that he didn’t. But he denied certain occasions.”

“What occasions?”

“When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor — and a very grand one — and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him.”

“He then prevaricated⁴⁰ about it — he said he hadn’t?” Her assent⁴¹ was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: “I see. He lied.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Grose mumbled⁴². This was a suggestion that it didn’t matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. “You see, after all, Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid him.”

I considered. “Did he put that to you as a justification⁴³?”

At this she dropped again. “No, he never spoke⁴⁴ of it.”

“Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?”

She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. “Well, he didn’t show anything. He denied,” she repeated; “he denied.”

Lord, how I pressed her now! “So that you could see he knew what was between the two wretches⁴⁵?”

“I don’t know — I don’t know!” the poor woman groaned⁴⁶.

“You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty⁴⁷ and delicacy⁴⁸, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable⁴⁹. But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that suggested to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed⁵⁰ their relation.”

“Oh, he couldn’t prevent — ”

“Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with vehemence⁵¹, athinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, have succeeded in making of him!”

“Ah, nothing that’s not nice NOW!” Mrs. Grose lugubriously⁵² 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 homely⁵³ 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 torment⁵⁴, “you must put it to me again, but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I cried in a way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which I must not for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her first example — the one to which she had just previously⁵⁵ referred — of the boy’s happy capacity for an occasional slip. “If Quint — on your remonstrance⁵⁶ at the time you speak of — was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another.” Again her admission was so adequate that I continued: “And you forgave him that?”

“Wouldn’t YOU?”

“Oh, yes!” And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I went on: “At all events, while he was with the man — ”

“Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!”

It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited exactly the particularly 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 impudent⁵⁷ are, I confess, less engaging specimens⁵⁸ than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. Still,” I mused⁵⁹, “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 anecdote⁶⁰ struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. “Surely you don’t accuse HIM— ”

“Of carrying on an intercourse⁶¹ that he conceals⁶² 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.

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