I
When Kate and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her
meeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face to
face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which the
warned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again
feeling for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight to the
quarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the two
women stood there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepherd
had received their great doctor's visit, which had been clearly no
small affair for her; but Milly had since then, with insistence, kept
in place, against communication and betrayal, as she now practically
confessed, the barrier of their invited guests. "You've been too dear.
With what I see you're full of you treated them beautifully. _Isn't_
Kate charming when she wants to be?"
Poor Susie's expression, contending at first, as in a high fine spasm,
with different dangers, had now quite let itself go. She had to make an
effort to reach a point in space already so remote. "Miss Croy? Oh she
was pleasant and clever. She knew," Mrs. Stringham added. "She knew."
Milly braced herself--but conscious above all, at the moment, of a high
compassion for her mate. She made her out as struggling--struggling in
all her nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, given her
nature, could only be a torment. Milly gathered from the struggle how
much there was of the pity, and how therefore it was both in her
tenderness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham suffered.
Wonderful and beautiful it was that this impression instantly steadied
the girl. Ruefully asking herself on what basis of ease, with the drop
of their barrier, they were to find themselves together, she felt the
question met with a relief that was almost joy. The basis, the
inevitable basis, was that she was going to be sorry for Susie, who, to
all appearance, had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable a
manner to be sorry for _her_. Mrs. Stringham's sorrow would hurt Mrs.
Stringham, but how could her own ever hurt? She had, the poor girl, at
all events, on the spot, five minutes of exaltation in which she turned
the tables on her friend with a pass of the hand, a gesture of an
energy that made a wind in the air. "Kate knew," she asked, "that you
were full of Sir Luke Strett?"
"She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and nice; she seemed to want
to help me through." Which the good lady had no sooner said, however,
than she almost tragically gasped at herself. She glared at Milly with
a pretended pluck. "What I mean is that she saw one had been taken up
with something. When I say she knows I should say she's a person who
guesses." And her grimace was also, on its side, heroic. "But _she_
doesn't matter, Milly."
The girl felt she by this time could face anything. "Nobody matters,
Susie. Nobody." Which her next words, however, rather contradicted.
"Did he take it ill that I wasn't here to see him? Wasn't it really
just what he wanted--to have it out, so much more simply, with _you_?"
"We didn't have anything 'out,' Milly," Mrs. Stringham delicately
quavered.
"Didn't he awfully like you," Milly went on, "and didn't he think you
the most charming person I could possibly have referred him to for an
account of me? Didn't you hit it off tremendously together and in fact
fall quite in love, so that it will really be a great advantage for you
to have me as a common ground? You're going to make, I can see, no end
of a good thing of me."
"My own child, my own child!" Mrs. Stringham pleadingly murmured; yet
showing as she did so that she feared the effect even of deprecation.
"Isn't he beautiful and good too himself?--altogether, whatever he may
say, a lovely acquaintance to have made? You're just the right people
for me--I see it now; and do you know what, between you, you must do?"
Then as Susie still but stared, wonderstruck and holding herself: "You
must simply see me through. Any way you choose. Make it out together.
I, on my side, will be beautiful too, and we'll be--the three of us,
with whatever others, oh as many as the case requires, any one you
like!--a sight for the gods. I'll be as easy for you as carrying a
feather." Susie took it for a moment in such silence that her young
friend almost saw her--and scarcely withheld the observation--as taking
it for "a part of the disease." This accordingly helped Milly to be, as
she judged, definite and wise. "He's at any rate awfully interesting,
isn't he?--which is so much to the good. We haven't at least--as we
might have, with the way we tumbled into it--got hold of one of the
dreary."
"Interesting, dearest?"--Mrs. Stringham felt her feet firmer. "I don't
know if he's interesting or not; but I do know, my own," she continued
to quaver, "that he's just as much interested as you could possibly
desire."
"Certainly--that's it. Like all the world."
"No, my precious, not like all the world. Very much more deeply and
intelligently."
"Ah there you are!" Milly laughed. "That's the way, Susie, I want you.
So 'buck' up, my dear. We'll have beautiful times with him. Don't
worry."
"I'm not worrying, Milly." And poor Susie's face registered the
sublimity of her lie.
It was at this that, too sharply penetrated, her companion went to her,
met by her with an embrace in which things were said that exceeded
speech. Each held and clasped the other as if to console her for this
unnamed woe, the woe for Mrs. Stringham of learning the torment of
helplessness, the woe for Milly of having _her_, at such a time, to
think of. Milly's assumption was immense, and the difficulty for her
friend was that of not being able to gainsay it without bringing it
more to the proof than tenderness and vagueness could permit. Nothing
in fact came to the proof between them but that they could thus cling
together--except indeed that, as we have indicated, the pledge of
protection and support was all the younger woman's own. "I don't ask
you," she presently said, "what he told you for yourself, nor what he
told you to tell me, nor how he took it, really, that I had left him to
you, nor what passed between you about me in any way. It wasn't to get
that out of you that I took my means to make sure of your meeting
freely--for there are things I don't want to know. I shall see him
again and again and shall know more than enough. All I do want is that
you shall see me through on _his_ basis, whatever it is; which it's
enough--for the purpose--that you yourself should know: that is with
him to show you how. I'll make it charming for you--that's what I mean;
I'll keep you up to it in such a way that half the time you won't know
you're doing it. And for that you're to rest upon me. There. It's
understood. We keep each other going, and you may absolutely feel of me
that I shan't break down. So, with the way you haven't so much as a dig
of the elbow to fear, how could you be safer?"
"He told me I _can_ help you--of course he told me that," Susie, on her
side, eagerly contended. "Why shouldn't he, and for what else have I
come out with you? But he told me nothing dreadful--nothing, nothing,
nothing," the poor lady passionately protested. "Only that you must do
as you like and as he tells you--which _is_ just simply to do as you
like."
"I must keep in sight of him. I must from time to time go to him. But
that's of course doing as I like. It's lucky," Milly smiled, "that I
like going to him."
Mrs. Stringham was here in agreement; she gave a clutch at the account
of their situation that most showed it as workable. "That's what _will_
be charming for me, and what I'm sure he really wants of me--to help
you to do as you like."
"And also a little, won't it be," Milly laughed, "to save me from the
consequences? Of course," she added, "there must first _be_ things I
like."
"Oh I think you'll find some," Mrs. Stringham more bravely said. "I
think there _are_ some--as for instance just this one. I mean," she
explained, "really having us so."
Milly thought. "Just as if I wanted you comfortable about _him_, and
him the same about you? Yes--I shall get the good of it."
Susan Shepherd appeared to wander from this into a slight confusion.
"Which of them are you talking of?"
Milly wondered an instant--then had a light. "I'm not talking of Mr.
Densher." With which moreover she showed amusement. "Though if you can
be comfortable about Mr. Densher too so much the better."
"Oh you meant Sir Luke Strett? Certainly he's a fine type. Do you
know," Susie continued, "whom he reminds me of? Of _our_ great man--Dr.
Buttrick of Boston."
Milly recognised Dr. Buttrick of Boston, but she dropped him after a
tributary pause. "What do you think, now that you've seen him, of Mr.
Densher?"
It was not till after consideration, with her eyes fixed on her
friend's, that Susie produced her answer. "I think he's very handsome."
Milly remained smiling at her, though putting on a little the manner of
a teacher with a pupil. "Well, that will do for the first time. I
_have_ done," she went on, "what I wanted."
"Then that's all _we_ want. You see there are plenty of things."
Milly shook her head for the "plenty." "The best is not to know--that
includes them all. I don't--I don't know. Nothing about
anything--except that you're _with_ me. Remember that, please. There
won't be anything that, on my side, for you, I shall forget. So it's
all right."
The effect of it by this time was fairly, as intended, to sustain
Susie, who dropped in spite of herself into the reassuring. "Most
certainly it's all right. I think you ought to understand that he sees
no reason--"
"Why I shouldn't have a grand long life?" Milly had taken it straight
up, as to understand it and for a moment consider it. But she disposed
of it otherwise. "Oh of course I know _that_." She spoke as if her
friend's point were small.
Mrs. Stringham tried to enlarge it. "Well, what I mean is that he
didn't say to me anything that he hasn't said to yourself."
"Really?--I would in his place!" She might have been disappointed, but
she had her good humour. "He tells me to _live_"--and she oddly limited
the word.