“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
abasement. There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more
readily for my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer’s
late clever, good-looking “own” man; impudent, assured, spoiled,
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 if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again
appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation
of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out
with decision: “It must have been also what _she_ wished!”
Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at
the same time: “Poor woman--she paid for it!”
“Then you do know what she died of?” I asked.
“No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I
didn’t; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!”
“Yet you had, then, your idea----”
“Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. She couldn’t
have stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! And afterwards I
imagined--and I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful.”
“Not so dreadful as what _I_ do,” I replied; on which I must have
shown her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of miserable
defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the
renewed touch of her 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, and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do
it!” I sobbed in despair; “I don’t save or shield them! It’s
far worse than I dreamed--they’re lost!”