For a moment now, in silence, he took it all in, might have had it
before him. "What you want of me then is to make up to a sick girl."
"Ah but you admit yourself that she doesn't affect you as sick. You
understand moreover just how much--and just how little."
"It's amazing," he presently answered, "what you think I understand."
"Well, if you've brought me to it, my dear," she returned, "that has
been your way of breaking _me_ in. Besides which, so far as making up
to her goes, plenty of others will."
Densher for a little, under this suggestion, might have been seeing
their young friend on a pile of cushions and in a perpetual tea-gown,
amid flowers and with drawn blinds, surrounded by the higher nobility.
"Others can follow their tastes. Besides, others are free."
"But so are you, my dear!"
She had spoken with impatience, and her suddenly quitting him had
sharpened it; in spite of which he kept his place, only looking up at
her. "You're prodigious!"
"Of course I'm prodigious!"--and, as immediately happened, she gave a
further sign of it that he fairly sat watching. The door from the lobby
had, as she spoke, been thrown open for a gentleman who, immediately
finding her within his view, advanced to greet her before the
announcement of his name could reach her companion. Densher none the
less felt himself brought quickly into relation; Kate's welcome to the
visitor became almost precipitately an appeal to her friend, who slowly
rose to meet it. "I don't know whether you know Lord Mark." And then
for the other party: "Mr. Merton Densher--who has just come back from
America."
"Oh!" said the other party while Densher said nothing--occupied as he
mainly was on the spot with weighing the sound in question. He
recognised it in a moment as less imponderable than it might have
appeared, as having indeed positive claims. It wasn't, that is, he
knew, the "Oh!" of the idiot, however great the superficial
resemblance: it was that of the clever, the accomplished man; it was
the very specialty of the speaker, and a deal of expensive training and
experience had gone to producing it. Densher felt somehow that, as a
thing of value accidentally picked up, it would retain an interest of
curiosity. The three stood for a little together in an awkwardness to
which he was conscious of contributing his share; Kate failing to ask
Lord Mark to be seated, but letting him know that he would find Mrs.
Lowder, with some others, on the balcony.
"Oh and Miss Theale I suppose?--as I seemed to hear outside, from
below, Mrs. Stringham's unmistakeable voice."
"Yes, but Mrs. Stringham's alone. Milly's unwell," the girl explained,
"and was compelled to disappoint us."
"Ah 'disappoint'--rather!" And, lingering a little, he kept his eyes on
Densher. "She isn't really bad, I trust?"
Densher, after all he had heard, easily supposed him interested in
Milly; but he could imagine him also interested in the young man with
whom he had found Kate engaged and whom he yet considered without
visible intelligence. That young man concluded in a moment that he was
doing what he wanted, satisfying himself as to each. To this he was
aided by Kate, who produced a prompt: "Oh dear no; I think not. I've
just been reassuring Mr. Densher," she added--"who's as concerned as
the rest of us. I've been calming his fears."
"Oh!" said Lord Mark again--and again it was just as good. That was for
Densher, the latter could see, or think he saw. And then for the
others: "_My_ fears would want calming. We must take great care of her.
This way?"
She went with him a few steps, and while Densher, hanging about, gave
them frank attention, presently paused again for some further colloquy.
What passed between them their observer lost, but she was presently
with him again, Lord Mark joining the rest. Densher was by this time
quite ready for her. "It's _he_ who's your aunt's man?"
"Oh immensely."
"I mean for _you._"
"That's what I mean too," Kate smiled. "There he is. Now you can judge."
"Judge of what?"
"Judge of him."
"Why should I judge of him?" Densher asked. "I've nothing to do with
him."
"Then why do you ask about him?"
"To judge of you--which is different."
Kate seemed for a little to look at the difference. "To take the
measure, do you mean, of my danger?"
He hesitated; then he said: "I'm thinking, I dare say, of Miss
Theale's. How does your aunt reconcile his interest in her--?"
"With his interest in me?"
"With her own interest in you," Densher said while she reflected. "If
that interest--Mrs. Lowder's--takes the form of Lord Mark, hasn't he
rather to look out for the forms _he_ takes?"
Kate seemed interested in the question, but "Oh he takes them easily,"
she answered. "The beauty is that she doesn't trust him."
"That Milly doesn't?"
"Yes--Milly either. But I mean Aunt Maud. Not really."
Densher gave it his wonder. "Takes him to her heart and yet thinks he
cheats?"
"Yes," said Kate--"that's the way people are. What they think of their
enemies, goodness knows, is bad enough; but I'm still more struck with
what they think of their friends. Milly's own state of mind, however,"
she went on, "is lucky. That's Aunt Maud's security, though she doesn't
yet fully recognise it--besides being Milly's own."
"You conceive it a real escape then not to care for him?"
She shook her head in beautiful grave deprecation. "You oughtn't to
make me say too much. But I'm glad I don't."
"Don't say too much?"
"Don't care for Lord Mark."
"Oh!" Densher answered with a sound like his lordship's own. To which
he added: "You absolutely hold that that poor girl doesn't?"
"Ah you know what I hold about that poor girl!" It had made her again
impatient.
Yet he stuck a minute to the subject. "You scarcely call him, I
suppose, one of the dukes."
"Mercy, no--far from it. He's not, compared with other possibilities,
'in' it. Milly, it's true," she said, to be exact, "has no natural
sense of social values, doesn't in the least understand our differences
or know who's who or what's what."
"I see. That," Densher laughed, "is her reason for liking _me_."
"Precisely. She doesn't resemble me," said Kate, "who at least know
what I lose."
Well, it had all risen for Densher to a considerable interest. "And
Aunt Maud--why shouldn't _she_ know? I mean that your friend there
isn't really anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value?"
"Scarcely; save in the sense of being uncle to a duke. That's
undeniably something. He's the best moreover we can get."
"Oh, oh!" said Densher; and his doubt was not all derisive.
"It isn't Lord Mark's grandeur," she went on without heeding this;
"because perhaps in the line of that alone--as he has no money--more
could be done. But she's not a bit sordid; she only counts with the
sordidness of others. Besides, he's grand enough, with a duke in his
family and at the other end of the string. _The_ thing's his genius."
"And do you believe in that?"
"In Lord Mark's genius?" Kate, as if for a more final opinion than had
yet been asked of her, took a moment to think. She balanced indeed so
that one would scarce have known what to expect; but she came out in
time with a very sufficient "Yes!"
"Political?"
"Universal. I don't know at least," she said, "what else to call it
when a man's able to make himself without effort, without violence,
without machinery of any sort, so intensely felt. He has somehow an
effect without his being in any traceable way a cause."
"Ah but if the effect," said Densher with conscious superficiality,
"isn't agreeable--?"
"Oh but it is!"
"Not surely for every one."
"If you mean not for you," Kate returned, "you may have reasons--and
men don't count. Women don't know if it's agreeable or not."
"Then there you are!"
"Yes, precisely--that takes, on his part, genius."
Densher stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus
promptly, easily and above all amusingly met him with, would have been
found, should it have come to an analysis, to "take." Something
suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, welled up in him and
overflowed--the sense of his good fortune and her variety, of the
future she promised, the interest she supplied. "All women but you are
stupid. How can I look at another? You're different and different--and
then you're different again. No marvel Aunt Maud builds on you--except
that you're so much too good for what she builds _for_. Even 'society'
won't know how good for it you are; it's too stupid, and you're beyond
it. You'd have to pull it uphill--it's you yourself who are at the top.
The women one meets--what are they but books one has already read?
You're a whole library of the unknown, the uncut." He almost moaned, he
ached, from the depth of his content. "Upon my word I've a
subscription!"
She took it from him with her face again giving out all it had in
answer, and they remained once more confronted and united in their
essential wealth of life. "It's you who draw me out. I exist in you.
Not in others."
It had been, however, as if the thrill of their association itself
pressed in him, as great felicities do, the sharp spring of fear. "See
here, you know: don't, _don't_--!"
"Don't what?"
"Don't fail me. It would kill me."
She looked at him a minute with no response but her eyes. "So you think
you'll kill _me_ in time to prevent it?" She smiled, but he saw her the
next instant as smiling through tears; and the instant after this she
had got, in respect to the particular point, quite off. She had come
back to another, which was one of her own; her own were so closely
connected that Densher's were at best but parenthetic. Still she had a
distance to go. "You do then see your way?" She put it to him before
they joined--as was high time--the others. And she made him understand
she meant his way with Milly.
He had dropped a little in presence of the explanation; then she had
brought him up to a sort of recognition. He could make out by this
light something of what he saw, but a dimness also there was,
undispelled since his return. "There's something you must definitely
tell me. If our friend knows that all the while--?"
She came straight to his aid, formulating for him his anxiety, though
quite to smooth it down. "All the while she and I here were growing
intimate, you and I were in unmentioned relation? If she knows that,
yes, she knows our relation must have involved your writing to me."
"Then how could she suppose you weren't answering?"
"She doesn't suppose it."
"How then can she imagine you never named her?"
"She doesn't. She knows now I did name her. I've told her everything.
She's in possession of reasons that will perfectly do."
Still he just brooded. "She takes things from you exactly as I take
them?"
"Exactly as you take them."
"She's just such another victim?"
"Just such another. You're a pair."
"Then if anything happens," said Densher, "we can console each other?"
"Ah something _may_ indeed happen," she returned, "if you'll only go
straight!"
He watched the others an instant through the window. "What do you mean
by going straight?"
"Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try, as I've told you before, and
you'll see. You'll have me perfectly, always, to refer to."
"Oh rather, I hope! But if she's going away?"
It pulled Kate up but a moment. "I'll bring her back. There you are.
You won't be able to say I haven't made it smooth for you."
He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But it wasn't the
queerness that after another minute was uppermost. He was in a wondrous
silken web, and it was amusing. "You spoil me!"
He wasn't sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this juncture reappeared, had
caught his word as it dropped from him; probably not, he thought, her
attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and
who was now, none too soon, taking leave of her. They were followed by
Lord Mark and by the other men, but two or three things happened before
any dispersal of the company began. One of these was that Kate found
time to say to him with furtive emphasis: "You must go now!" Another
was that she next addressed herself in all frankness to Lord Mark, drew
near to him with an almost reproachful "Come and talk to _me!_"--a
challenge resulting after a minute for Densher in a consciousness of
their installation together in an out-of-the-way corner, though not the
same he himself had just occupied with her. Still another was that Mrs.
Stringham, in the random intensity of her farewells, affected him as
looking at him with a small grave intimation, something into which he
afterwards read the meaning that if he had happened to desire a few
words with her after dinner he would have found her ready. This
impression was naturally light, but it just left him with the sense of
something by his own act overlooked, unappreciated. It gathered perhaps
a slightly sharper shade from the mild formality of her "Good-night,
sir!" as she passed him; a matter as to which there was now nothing
more to be done, thanks to the alertness of the young man he by this
time had appraised as even more harmless than himself. This personage
had forestalled him in opening the door for her and was evidently--with
a view, Densher might have judged, to ulterior designs on
Milly--proposing to attend her to her carriage. What further occurred
was that Aunt Maud, having released her, immediately had a word for
himself. It was an imperative "Wait a minute," by which she both
detained and dismissed him; she was particular about her minute, but he
hadn't yet given her, as happened, a sign of withdrawal.
"Return to our little friend. You'll find her really interesting."
"If you mean Miss Theale," he said, "I shall certainly not forget her.
But you must remember that, so far as her 'interest' is concerned, I
myself discovered, I--as was said at dinner--invented her."
"Well, one seemed rather to gather that you hadn't taken out the
patent. Don't, I only mean, in the press of other things, too much
neglect her."
Affected, surprised by the coincidence of her appeal with Kate's, he
asked himself quickly if it mightn't help him with her. He at any rate
could but try. "You're all looking after my manners. That's exactly,
you know, what Miss Croy has been saying to me. _She_ keeps me up--she
has had so much to say about them."
He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess an account of his
passage with Kate that, while quite veracious, might be reassuring to
herself. But Aunt Maud, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it as
if her confidence were supplied with other props. If she saw his
intention in it she yet blinked neither with doubt nor with acceptance;
she only said imperturbably: "Yes, she'll herself do anything for her
friend; so that she but preaches what she practises."
Densher really quite wondered if Aunt Maud knew how far Kate's devotion
went. He was moreover a little puzzled by this special harmony; in face
of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Lowder had bethought herself
of the American girl as a distraction for him, and if Kate's mastery of
the subject were therefore but an appearance addressed to her aunt.
What might really _become_ in all this of the American girl was
therefore a question that, on the latter contingency, would lose none
of its sharpness. However, questions could wait, and it was easy, so
far as he understood, to meet Mrs. Lowder. "It isn't a bit, all the
same, you know, that I resist. I find Miss Theale charming."