IV

It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was

rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at Bly--a

mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in

unsuspected confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over,

or how long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where

I had had my collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house

darkness had quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had

held me and driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have

walked three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed

that this mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The

most 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 appearance, she knew nothing

whatever that could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I

had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull me

up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus

finding myself hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole

history seems to me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear

was one, as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On

the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me,

I, for a reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward

revolution--offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea

of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as

soon as possible to my room.

Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer

affair enough. There were hours, from day to day,--or at least there

were moments, snatched even from clear duties,--when I had to shut

myself up to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than

I could bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for

the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth

that I could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom

I had been so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately

concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without forms

of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic complication. The

shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at

the end of three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that

I had not been practised upon by the servants nor made the object of

any “game.” Of whatever it was that I knew nothing was known around

me. There was but one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty

rather gross. That was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and

locked the door to say to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to

an intrusion; 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 I could

throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges

was a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my

original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the

probable grey prose of my office. There was to be no grey prose,

it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming

that presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the

nursery and the poetry of the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of

course, that we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express

no otherwise the sort of interest my companions inspired. How can

I describe that except by saying that instead of growing used to

them--and it’s a marvel for a governess: I call the sisterhood to

witness!--I made constant fresh discoveries. There was one direction,

assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped: deep obscurity continued

to cover the region of the boy’s conduct at school. It had been

promptly given me, I have noted, to face that mystery without a

pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the truth to say that--without

a word--he himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge

absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose-flush of his

innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean

school-world, and he had paid a price for it. I reflected acutely that

the sense of such differences, such superiorities of quality, always,

on the part of the majority--which could include even stupid, sordid

head-masters--turns 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

the cherubs of the anecdote, who had--morally, at any rate--nothing to

whack! I remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as

it were, no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there

was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive,

yet 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. I took 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. I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never

spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for

my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I

was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time,

I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote

to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these

days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going

well. But with my 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 wanted, but to become aware of a person on

the other side of the window and looking straight in. One step into the

room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. The

person looking straight in was the person who had already appeared to

me. He appeared thus again with I won’t say greater distinctness,

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, only to show me how intense the former

had been. He remained but a few seconds--long enough to convince me

he also saw and recognised; but it was as if I had been looking at him

for years and had known him always. Something, however, happened this

time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, through

the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it

quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it

fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the

added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He

had come for someone else.

The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst of

dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started, as I

stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage

because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight

out of the door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant,

upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush,

turned a corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing

now--my visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the

real relief of this; but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time

to reappear. I call it time, but how long was it? I can’t speak

to the purpose today of the duration of these things. That kind of

measure must have left me: they couldn’t have lasted as they actually

appeared to me to last. The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and

the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a

great emptiness. There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember

the clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him. He was

there or was not there: not there if I didn’t see him. I got hold of

this; then, instinctively, instead of returning as I had come, went

to the window. It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place

myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane

and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to

show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for

himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full

image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I

had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her

something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this

made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short,

and retreated on just _my_ lines, and I knew she had then passed out

and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained

where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But

there’s only one I take space to mention. I wondered why _she_ should

be scared.

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----?” She was now flushed and out of breath.

I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have

made a wonderful face. “Do I show it?”

“You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.”

I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My

need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a

rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not

with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held

her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind

of support in the shy heave of her surprise. “You came for me for

church, of course, but I can’t go.”

“Has anything happened?”

“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 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 old tower.”

She could only look at me harder. “Do you mean he’s a stranger?”

“Oh, very much!”

“Yet you didn’t tell me?”

“No--for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed----”

Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. “Ah, I haven’t

guessed!” she said very simply. “How can I if _you_ don’t

imagine?”

“I don’t in the very least.”

“You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?”

“And on this spot just now.”

Mrs. Grose looked round again. “What was he doing on the tower?”

“Only standing there and looking down at me.”

She thought a minute. “Was he a gentleman?”

I found I had no need to think. “No.” She gazed in deeper

wonder. “No.”

“Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?”

“Nobody--nobody. I didn’t tell you, but I made sure.”

She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It

only went indeed a little way. “But if he isn’t a gentleman----”

“What _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, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt

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----?”