"Why the determination of your movements. You spoke just now of going
somewhere for that."
"For better air?"--she remembered. "Oh yes, one certainly wants to get
out of London in August."
"Rather, of course!"--he fully understood. "Though I'm glad you've hung
on long enough for me to catch you. Try us at any rate," he continued,
"once more."
"Whom do you mean by 'us'?" she presently asked.
It pulled him up an instant--representing, as he saw it might have
seemed, an allusion to himself as conjoined with Kate, whom he was
proposing not to mention any more than his hostess did. But the issue
was easy. "I mean all of us together, every one you'll find ready to
surround you with sympathy."
It made her, none the less, in her odd charming way, challenge him
afresh. "Why do you say sympathy?"
"Well, it's doubtless a pale word. What we _shall_ feel for you will be
much nearer worship."
"As near then as you like!" With which at last Kate's name was sounded.
"The people I'd most come back for are the people you know. I'd do it
for Mrs. Lowder, who has been beautifully kind to me."
"So she has to _me_," said Densher. "I feel," he added as she at first
answered nothing, "that, quite contrary to anything I originally
expected, I've made a good friend of her."
"I didn't expect it either--its turning out as it has. But I did," said
Milly, "with Kate. I shall come back for her too. I'd do anything"--she
kept it up--"for Kate."
Looking at him as with conscious clearness while she spoke, she might
for the moment have effectively laid a trap for whatever remains of the
ideal straightness in him were still able to pull themselves together
and operate. He was afterwards to say to himself that something had at
that moment hung for him by a hair. "Oh I know what one would do for
Kate!"--it had hung for him by a hair to break out with that, which he
felt he had really been kept from by an element in his consciousness
stronger still. The proof of the truth in question was precisely in his
silence; resisting the impulse to break out was what he was doing for
Kate. This at the time moreover came and went quickly enough; he was
trying the next minute but to make Milly's allusion easy for herself.
"Of course I know what friends you are--and of course I understand," he
permitted himself to add, "any amount of devotion to a person so
charming. That's the good turn then she'll do us all--I mean her
working for your return."
"Oh you don't know," said Milly, "how much I'm really on her hands."
He could but accept the appearance of wondering how much he might show
he knew. "Ah she's very masterful."
"She's great. Yet I don't say she bullies me."
"No--that's not the way. At any rate it isn't hers," he smiled. He
remembered, however, then that an undue acquaintance with Kate's ways
was just what he mustn't show; and he pursued the subject no further
than to remark with a good intention that had the further merit of
representing a truth: "I don't feel as if I knew her--really to call
know."
"Well, if you come to that, I don't either!" she laughed. The words
gave him, as soon as they were uttered, a sense of responsibility for
his own; though during a silence that ensued for a minute he had time
to recognise that his own contained after all no element of falsity.
Strange enough therefore was it that he could go too far--if it _was_
too far--without being false. His observation was one he would
perfectly have made to Kate herself. And before he again spoke, and
before Milly did, he took time for more still--for feeling how just
here it was that he must break short off if his mind was really made up
not to go further. It was as if he had been at a corner--and fairly put
there by his last speech; so that it depended on him whether or no to
turn it. The silence, if prolonged but an instant, might even have
given him a sense of her waiting to see what he would do. It was filled
for them the next thing by the sound, rather voluminous for the August
afternoon, of the approach, in the street below them, of heavy
carriage-wheels and of horses trained to "step." A rumble, a great
shake, a considerable effective clatter, had been apparently succeeded
by a pause at the door of the hotel, which was in turn accompanied by a
due display of diminished prancing and stamping. "You've a visitor,"
Densher laughed, "and it must be at least an ambassador."
"It's only my own carriage; it does that--isn't it wonderful?--every
day. But we find it, Mrs. Stringham and I, in the innocence of our
hearts, very amusing." She had got up, as she spoke, to assure herself
of what she said; and at the end of a few steps they were together on
the balcony and looking down at her waiting chariot, which made indeed
a brave show. "Is it very awful?"
It was to Densher's eyes--save for its absurd heaviness--only
pleasantly pompous. "It seems to me delightfully rococo. But how do I
know? You're mistress of these things, in contact with the highest
wisdom. You occupy a position, moreover, thanks to which your
carriage--well, by this time, in the eye of London, also occupies one."
But she was going out, and he mustn't stand in her way. What had
happened the next minute was first that she had denied she was going
out, so that he might prolong his stay; and second that she had said
she would go out with pleasure if he would like to drive--that in fact
there were always things to do, that there had been a question for her
to-day of several in particular, and that this in short was why the
carriage had been ordered so early. They perceived, as she said these
things, that an enquirer had presented himself, and, coming back, they
found Milly's servant announcing the carriage and prepared to accompany
her. This appeared to have for her the effect of settling the
matter--on the basis, that is, of Densher's happy response. Densher's
happy response, however, had as yet hung fire, the process we have
described in him operating by this time with extreme intensity. The
system of not pulling up, not breaking off, had already brought him
headlong, he seemed to feel, to where they actually stood; and just now
it was, with a vengeance, that he must do either one thing or the
other. He had been waiting for some moments, which probably seemed to
him longer than they were; this was because he was anxiously watching
himself wait. He couldn't keep that up for ever; and since one thing or
the other was what he must do, it was for the other that he presently
became conscious of having decided. If he had been drifting it settled
itself in the manner of a bump, of considerable violence, against a
firm object in the stream. "Oh yes; I'll go with you with pleasure.
It's a charming idea."
She gave no look to thank him--she rather looked away; she only said at
once to her servant, "In ten minutes"; and then to her visitor, as the
man went out, "We'll go somewhere--I shall like that. But I must ask of
you time--as little as possible--to get ready." She looked over the
room to provide for him, keep him there. "There are books and
things--plenty; and I dress very quickly." He caught her eyes only as
she went, on which he thought them pretty and touching.
Why especially touching at that instant he could certainly scarce have
said; it was involved, it was lost in the sense of her wishing to
oblige him. Clearly what had occurred was her having wished it so that
she had made him simply wish, in civil acknowledgement, to oblige
_her;_ which he had now fully done by turning his corner. He was quite
round it, his corner, by the time the door had closed upon her and he
stood there alone. Alone he remained for three minutes more--remained
with several very living little matters to think about. One of these
was the phenomenon--typical, highly American, he would have said--of
Milly's extreme spontaneity. It was perhaps rather as if he had sought
refuge--refuge from another question--in the almost exclusive
contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him nowhere; not even
to a sound generalisation about American girls. It was spontaneous for
his young friend to have asked him to drive with her alone--since she
hadn't mentioned her companion; but she struck him after all as no more
advanced in doing it than Kate, for instance, who wasn't an American
girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Besides, Kate _would_ have
done it, though Kate wasn't at all, in the same sense as Milly,
spontaneous. And then in addition Kate _had_ done it--or things very
like it. Furthermore he was engaged to Kate--even if his ostensibly not
being put her public freedom on other grounds. On all grounds, at any
rate, the relation between Kate and freedom, between freedom and Kate,
was a different one from any he could associate or cultivate, as to
anything, with the girl who had just left him to prepare to give
herself up to him. It had never struck him before, and he moved about
the room while he thought of it, touching none of the books placed at
his disposal. Milly was forward, as might be said, but not advanced;
whereas Kate was backward--backward still, comparatively, as an English
girl--and yet advanced in a high degree. However--though this didn't
straighten it out--Kate was of course two or three years older; which
at their time of life considerably counted.
Thus ingeniously discriminating, Densher continued slowly to wander;
yet without keeping at bay for long the sense of having rounded his
corner. He had so rounded it that he felt himself lose even the option
of taking advantage of Milly's absence to retrace his steps. If he
might have turned tail, vulgarly speaking, five minutes before, he
couldn't turn tail now; he must simply wait there with his
consciousness charged to the brim. Quickly enough moreover that issue
was closed from without; in the course of three minutes more Miss
Theale's servant had returned. He preceded a visitor whom he had met,
obviously, at the foot of the stairs and whom, throwing open the door,
he loudly announced as Miss Croy. Kate, on following him in, stopped
short at sight of Densher--only, after an instant, as the young man saw
with free amusement, not from surprise and still less from
discomfiture. Densher immediately gave his explanation--Miss Theale had
gone to prepare to drive--on receipt of which the servant effaced
himself.
"And you're going with her?" Kate asked.
"Yes--with your approval; which I've taken, as you see, for granted."
"Oh," she laughed, "my approval's complete!" She was thoroughly
consistent and handsome about it.
"What I mean is of course," he went on--for he was sensibly affected by
her gaiety--"at your so lively instigation."
She had looked about the room--she might have been vaguely looking for
signs of the duration, of the character of his visit, a momentary aid
in taking a decision. "Well, instigation then, as much as you like."
She treated it as pleasant, the success of her plea with him; she made
a fresh joke of this direct impression of it. "So much so as that? Do
you know I think I won't wait?"
"Not to see her--after coming?"
"Well, with you in the field--! I came for news of her, but she must be
all right. If she _is_--"
But he took her straight up. "Ah how do I know?" He was moved to say
more. "It's not I who am responsible for her, my dear. It seems to me
it's you." She struck him as making light of a matter that had been
costing him sundry qualms; so that they couldn't both be quite just.
Either she was too easy or he had been too anxious. He didn't want at
all events to feel a fool for that. "I'm doing nothing--and shall not,
I assure you, do anything but what I'm told."
Their eyes met with some intensity over the emphasis he had given his
words; and he had taken it from her the next moment that he really
needn't get into a state. What in the world was the matter? She asked
it, with interest, for all answer. "Isn't she better--if she's able to
see you?"
"She assures me she's in perfect health."
Kate's interest grew. "I knew she would." On which she added: "It won't
have been really for illness that she stayed away last night."
"For what then?"
"Well--for nervousness."
"Nervousness about what?"
"Oh you know!" She spoke with a hint of impatience, smiling however the
next moment. "I've told you that."
He looked at her to recover in her face what she had told him; then it
was as if what he saw there prompted him to say: "What have you told
_her?_"
She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all as if they remembered
where they were, liable to surprise, talking with softened voices, even
stretching their opportunity, by such talk, beyond a quite right
feeling. Milly's room would be close at hand, and yet they were saying
things--! For a moment, none the less, they kept it up. "Ask _her_, if
you like; you're free--she'll tell you. Act as you think best; don't
trouble about what you think I may or mayn't have told. I'm all right
with her," said Kate. "So there you are."
"If you mean _here_ I am," he answered, "it's unmistakeable. If you
also mean that her believing in you is all I have to do with you're so
far right as that she certainly does believe in you."
"Well then take example by her."
"She's really doing it for you," Densher continued. "She's driving me
out for you."
"In that case," said Kate with her soft tranquillity, "you can do it a
little for _her_. I'm not afraid," she smiled.
He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it
and affected again, as he had already so often been, by more things in
this face and in her whole person and presence than he was, to his
relief, obliged to find words for. It wasn't, under such impressions, a
question of words. "I do nothing for any one in the world but you. But
for you I'll do anything."
"Good, good," said Kate. "That's how I like you."