"So nice," said the grateful Milly.
"Oh," Kate laughed, "we'll pull you through! And won't you now bring
Mrs. Stringham?"
But Milly after an instant was again clear about that. "Not till I've
seen him once more."
She was to have found this preference, two days later, abundantly
justified; and yet when, in prompt accordance with what had passed
between them, she reappeared before her distinguished friend--that
character having, for him, in the interval, built itself up still
higher--the first thing he asked her was whether she had been
accompanied. She told him, on this, straightway, everything; completely
free at present from her first embarrassment, disposed even--as she
felt she might become--to undue volubility, and conscious moreover of
no alarm from his thus perhaps wishing that she had not come alone. It
was exactly as if, in the forty-eight hours that had passed, her
acquaintance with him had somehow increased, and his own knowledge in
particular received mysterious additions. They had been together,
before, scarce ten minutes; but the relation, the one the ten minutes
had so beautifully created, was there to take straight up: and this
not, on his own part, from mere professional heartiness, mere bedside
manner, which she would have disliked--much rather from a quiet,
pleasant air in him of having positively asked about her, asked here
and there and found out. Of course he couldn't in the least have asked,
or have wanted to; there was no source of information to his hand, and
he had really needed none: he had found out simply by his genius--and
found out, she meant, literally everything. Now she knew not only that
she didn't dislike this--the state of being found out about; but that,
on the contrary, it was truly what she had come for, and that, for the
time at least, it would give her something firm to stand on. She struck
herself as aware, aware as she had never been, of really not having had
from the beginning anything firm. It would be strange for the firmness
to come, after all, from her learning in these agreeable conditions
that she was in some way doomed; but above all it would prove how
little she had hitherto had to hold her up. If she was now to be held
up by the mere process--since that was perhaps on the cards--of being
let down, this would only testify in turn to her queer little history.
_That_ sense of loosely rattling had been no process at all; and it was
ridiculously true that her thus sitting there to see her life put into
the scales represented her first approach to the taste of orderly
living. Such was Milly's romantic version--that her life, especially by
the fact of this second interview, _was_ put into the scales; and just
the best part of the relation established might have been, for that
matter, that the great grave charming man knew, had known at once, that
it was romantic, and in that measure allowed for it. Her only doubt,
her only fear, was whether he perhaps wouldn't even take advantage of
her being a little romantic to treat her as romantic altogether. This
doubtless was her danger with him; but she should see, and dangers in
general meanwhile dropped and dropped.
The very place, at the end of a few minutes, the commodious, "handsome"
room, far back in the fine old house, soundless from position, somewhat
sallow with years of celebrity, somewhat sombre even at midsummer--the
very place put on for her a look of custom and use, squared itself
solidly round her as with promises and certainties. She had come forth
to see the world, and this then was to be the world's light, the rich
dusk of a London "back," these the world's walls, those the world's
curtains and carpet. She should be intimate with the great bronze clock
and mantel-ornaments, conspicuously presented in gratitude and long
ago; she should be as one of the circle of eminent contemporaries,
photographed, engraved, signatured, and in particular framed and
glazed, who made up the rest of the decoration, and made up as well so
much of the human comfort; and while she thought of all the clean
truths, unfringed, unfingered, that the listening stillness, strained
into pauses and waits, would again and again, for years, have kept
distinct, she also wondered what she would eventually decide upon to
present in gratitude. She would give something better at least than the
brawny Victorian bronzes. This was precisely an instance of what she
felt he knew of her before he had done with her: that she was secretly
romancing at that rate, in the midst of so much else that was more
urgent, all over the place. So much for her secrets with him, none of
which really required to be phrased. It would have been, for example, a
secret for her from any one else that without a dear lady she had
picked up just before coming over she wouldn't have a decently near
connection, of any sort, for such an appeal as she was making, to put
forward: no one in the least, as it were, to produce for
respectability. But _his_ seeing it she didn't mind a scrap, and not a
scrap either his knowing how she had left the dear lady in the dark.
She had come alone, putting her friend off with a fraud: giving a
pretext of shops, of a whim, of she didn't know what--the amusement of
being for once in the streets by herself. The streets by herself were
new to her--she had always had in them a companion, or a maid; and he
was never to believe, moreover, that she couldn't take full in the face
anything he might have to say. He was softly amused at her account of
her courage; though he yet showed it somehow without soothing her too
grossly. Still, he did want to know whom she had. Hadn't there been a
lady with her on Wednesday?
"Yes--a different one. Not the one who's travelling with me. I've told
_her."_
Distinctly he was amused, and it added to his air--the greatest charm
of all--of giving her lots of time. "You've told her what?"
"Well," said Milly, "that I visit you in secret."
"And how many persons will she tell?"
"Oh, she's devoted. Not one."
"Well, if she's devoted doesn't that make another friend for you?"
It didn't take much computation, but she nevertheless had to think a
moment, conscious as she was that he distinctly _would_ want to fill
out his notion of her--even a little, as it were, to warm the air for
her. That, however--and better early than late--he must accept as of no
use; and she herself felt for an instant quite a competent certainty on
the subject of any such warming. The air, for Milly Theale, was, from
the very nature of the case, destined never to rid itself of a
considerable chill. This she could tell him with authority, if she
could tell him nothing else; and she seemed to see now, in short, that
it would importantly simplify. "Yes, it makes another; but they all
together wouldn't make--well, I don't know what to call it but the
difference. I mean when one is--really alone. I've never seen anything
like the kindness." She pulled up a minute while he waited--waited
again as if with his reasons for letting her, for almost making her,
talk. What she herself wanted was not, for the third time, to cry, as
it were, in public. She _had_ never seen anything like the kindness,
and she wished to do it justice; but she knew what she was about, and
justice was not wronged by her being able presently to stick to her
point. "Only one's situation is what it is. It's me it concerns. The
rest is delightful and useless. Nobody can really help. That's why I'm
by myself to-day. I _want_ to be--in spite of Miss Croy, who came with
me last. If you can help, so much the better and also of course if one
can, a little, one's self. Except for that--you and me doing our
best--I like you to see me just as I am. Yes, I like it--and I don't
exaggerate. Shouldn't one, at the start, show the worst--so that
anything after that may be better? It wouldn't make any real
difference--it _won't_ make any, anything that may happen won't--to any
one. Therefore I feel myself, this way, with you, just as I am; and--if
you do in the least care to know--it quite positively bears me up." She
put it as to his caring to know, because his manner seemed to give her
all her chance, and the impression was there for her to take. It was
strange and deep for her, this impression, and she did, accordingly,
take it straight home. It showed him--showed him in spite of
himself--as allowing, somewhere far within, things comparatively
remote, things in fact quite, as she would have said, outside,
delicately to weigh with him; showed him as interested, on her behalf,
in other questions beside the question of what was the matter with her.
She accepted such an interest as regular in the highest type of
scientific mind--his _being_ the even highest, magnificently because
otherwise, obviously, it wouldn't be there; but she could at the same
time take it as a direct source of light upon herself, even though that
might present her a little as pretending to equal him. Wanting to know
more about a patient than how a patient was constructed or deranged
couldn't be, even on the part of the greatest of doctors, anything but
some form or other of the desire to let the patient down easily. When
that was the case the reason, in turn, could only be, too manifestly,
pity; and when pity held up its tell-tale face like a head on a pike,
in a French revolution, bobbing before a window, what was the inference
but that the patient was bad? He might say what he would now--she would
always have seen the head at the window; and in fact from this moment
she only wanted him to say what he would. He might say it too with the
greater ease to himself as there wasn't one of her divinations that--as
her own--he would in any way put himself out for. Finally, if he was
making her talk she _was_ talking; and what it could, at any rate, come
to for him was that she wasn't afraid. If he wanted to do the dearest
thing in the world for her he would show her he believed she wasn't;
which undertaking of hers--not to have misled him--was what she counted
at the moment as her presumptuous little hint to him that she was as
good as himself. It put forward the bold idea that he could really _be_
misled; and there actually passed between them for some seconds a sign,
a sign of the eyes only, that they knew together where they were. This
made, in their brown old temple of truth, its momentary flicker; then
what followed it was that he had her, all the same, in his pocket; and
the whole thing wound up, for that consummation, with its kind dim
smile. Such kindness was wonderful with such dimness; but
brightness--that even of sharp steel--was of course for the other side
of the business, and it would all come in for her in one way or
another. "Do you mean," he asked, "that you've no relations at
all?--not a parent, not a sister, not even a cousin nor an aunt?"
She shook her head as with the easy habit of an interviewed heroine or
a freak of nature at a show. "Nobody whatever." But the last thing she
had come for was to be dreary about it. "I'm a survivor--a survivor of
a general wreck. You see," she added, "how that's to be taken into
account--that everyone else _has_ gone. When I was ten years old there
were, with my father and my mother, six of us. I'm all that's left. But
they died," she went on, to be fair all round, "of different things.
Still, there it is. And, as I told you before, I'm American. Not that I
mean that makes me worse. However, you'll probably know what it makes
me."
"Yes," he discreetly indulged her; "I know perfectly what it makes you.
It makes you, to begin with, a capital case."
She sighed, though gratefully, as if again before the social scene.
"Ah, there you are!"
"Oh, no; there 'we' aren't at all. There I am only--but as much as you
like. I've no end of American friends: there _they_ are, if you please,
and it's a fact that you couldn't very well be in a better place than
in their company. It puts you with plenty of others--and that isn't
pure solitude." Then he pursued: "I'm sure you've an excellent spirit;
but don't try to bear more things than you need." Which after an
instant he further explained. "Hard things have come to you in youth,
but you mustn't think life will be for you all hard things. You've the
right to be happy. You must make up your mind to it. You must accept
any form in which happiness may come."
"Oh, I'll accept any whatever!" she almost gaily returned. "And it
seems to me, for that matter, that I'm accepting a new one every day.
Now _this!"_ she smiled.
"This is very well so far as it goes. You can depend on me," the great
man said, "for unlimited interest. But I'm only, after all, one element
in fifty. We must gather in plenty of others. Don't mind who knows.
Knows, I mean, that you and I are friends."
"Ah, you do want to see some one!" she broke out. "You want to get at
some one who cares for me." With which, however, as he simply met this
spontaneity in a manner to show that he had often had it from young
persons of her race, and that he was familiar even with the
possibilities of their familiarity, she felt her freedom rendered vain
by his silence, and she immediately tried to think of the most
reasonable thing she could say. This would be, precisely, on the
subject of that freedom, which she now quickly spoke of as complete.
"That's of course by itself a great boon; so please don't think I don't
know it. I can do exactly what I like--anything in all the wide world.
I haven't a creature to ask--there's not a finger to stop me. I can
shake about till I'm black and blue. That perhaps isn't _all_ joy; but
lots of people, I know, would like to try it." He had appeared about to
put a question, but then had let her go on, which she promptly did, for
she understood him the next moment as having thus taken it from her
that her means were as great as might be. She had simply given it to
him so, and this was all that would ever pass between them on the
odious head. Yet she couldn't help also knowing that an important
effect, for his judgment, or at least for his amusement--which was his
feeling, since, marvellously, he did have feeling--was produced by it.
All her little pieces had now then fallen together for him like the
morsels of coloured glass that used to make combinations, under the
hand, in the depths of one of the polygonal peepshows of childhood. "So
that if it's a question of my doing anything under the sun that will
help----!"
"You'll _do_ anything under the sun? Good." He took that beautifully,
ever so pleasantly, for what it was worth; but time was needed--ten
minutes or so were needed on the spot--to deal even provisionally, with
the substantive question. It was convenient, in its degree, that there
was nothing she wouldn't do; but it seemed also highly and agreeably
vague that she should have to do anything. They thus appeared to be
taking her, together, for the moment, and almost for sociability, as
prepared to proceed to gratuitous extremities; the upshot of which was
in turn, that after much interrogation, auscultation, exploration, much
noting of his own sequences and neglecting of hers, had duly kept up
the vagueness, they might have struck themselves, or may at least
strike us, as coming back from an undeterred but useless voyage to the
north pole. Milly was ready, under orders, for the north pole; which
fact was doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her friend's
actual abstention from orders. "No," she heard him again distinctly
repeat it, "I don't want you for the present to do anything at all;
anything, that is, but obey a small prescription or two that will be
made clear to you, and let me within a few days come to see you at
home."
It was at first heavenly. "Then you'll see Mrs. Stringham." But she
didn't mind a bit now.
"Well, I shan't be afraid of Mrs. Stringham." And he said it once more
as she asked once more: "Absolutely not; I 'send' you nowhere.
England's all right--anywhere that's pleasant, convenient, decent, will
be all right. You say you can do exactly as you like. Oblige me
therefore by being so good as to do it. There's only one thing: you
ought of course, now, as soon as I've seen you again, to get out of
London."