We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I dare say
rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet
of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untravelled eyes. 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 protection
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 that made
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, nowhere 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 always 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 a confidence! “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
apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of my society 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 water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so
scant 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 expanse, and
then I felt the suggestion of 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?”
“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, but 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
much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had
got half-way 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 but
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 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 lived, by this time, 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 was now complete. The next thing she did, however,
was to stoop straight down and pluck--quite as if it were all she was
there for--a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became 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 presently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it
was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly 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 simplicity of _her_ relation. 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 virtually
said to each other was that pretexts were useless 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 launched 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 bareheaded 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?”