IV

It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was

rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at Bly—a mystery

of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected

confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a

confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my

collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had

quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and

driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three

miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this

mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular

part of it, in fact—singular as the rest had been—was the part I

became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes

back to me in the general train—the impression, as I received it on my

return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and

with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of my

friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to me

straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere

relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could

bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected

in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow

measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself

hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to

me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may

say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot,

accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a

reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward

resolution—offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea

of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as

soon as possible to my room.

Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer

affair enough. There were hours, from day to day—or at least there were

moments, snatched even from clear duties—when I had to shut myself up

to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could

bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the

truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I

could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been

so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned.

It took little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry

and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had

suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of

three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not

been practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any “game.”

Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was

but one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That

was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say

to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some

unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made his way in

unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of view, and then

stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold hard stare, that

was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that

we should surely see no more of him.

This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that

what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my

charming work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora,

and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could

throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was

a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my

original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the

probable gray prose of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it

appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that

presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery

and the poetry of the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of course, that

we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise

the sort of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that

except by saying that instead of growing used to them—and it’s a marvel

for a governess: I call the sisterhood to witness!—I made constant

fresh discoveries. There was one direction, assuredly, in which these

discoveries stopped: deep obscurity continued to cover the region of

the boy’s conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have

noted, to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it would be

nearer the truth to say that—without a word—he himself had cleared it

up. He had made the whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there

with the real rose flush of his innocence: he was only too fine and

fair for the little horrid, unclean school-world, and he had paid a

price for it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such differences,

such superiorities of quality, always, on the part of the

majority—which could include even stupid, sordid headmasters—turn

infallibly to the vindictive.

Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it

never made Miles a muff) that kept them—how shall I express it?—almost

impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs

of the anecdote, who had—morally, at any rate—nothing to whack! I

remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were,

no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in

this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet

extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I

have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a

second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really

been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have “caught” it, and I

should have caught it by the rebound—I should have found the trace. I

found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of

his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part,

was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under

the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I

perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to

any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days

of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. But

with my children, what things in the world mattered? That was the

question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by

their loveliness.

There was a Sunday—to get on—when it rained with such force and for so

many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence

of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that,

should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the late

service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which,

through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a matter

of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall,

I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that

had received them—with a publicity perhaps not edifying—while I sat

with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in

that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the “grown-up” dining

room. The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover

them. The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered,

and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on

a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but

to become aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking

straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was

instantaneous; it was all there. The person looking straight in was the

person who had already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I

won’t say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a

nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made

me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same—he was

the same, and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the

waist up, the window, though the dining room was on the ground floor,

not going down to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to

the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to

show me how intense the former had been. He remained but a few

seconds—long enough to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it

was as if I had been looking at him for years and had known him always.

Something, however, happened this time that had not happened before;

his stare into my face, through the glass and across the room, was as

deep and hard as then, but it quitted me for a moment during which I

could still watch it, see it fix successively several other things. On

the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was

not for me he had come there. He had come for someone else.

The flash of this knowledge—for it was knowledge in the midst of

dread—produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood

there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because I

was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the

door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the

drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a

corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing now—my

visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief

of this; but I took in the whole scene—I gave him time to reappear. I

call it time, but how long was it? I can’t speak to the purpose today

of the duration of these things. That kind of measure must have left

me: they couldn’t have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last.

The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all

I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. There were

shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt

that none of them concealed him. He was there or was not there: not

there if I didn’t see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively,

instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was

confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had

stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had

looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what

his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before,

came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition

of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant;

she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock

that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I

had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just _my_

lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that

I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited

I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take space to

mention. I wondered why _she_ should be scared.

V

Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she

loomed again into view. “What in the name of goodness is the matter—?”

She was now flushed and out of breath.

I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have made a

wonderful face. “Do I show it?”

“You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.”

I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My

need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a

rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not

with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held

her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of

support in the shy heave of her surprise. “You came for me for church,

of course, but I can’t go.”

“Has anything happened?”

“Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?”

“Through this window? Dreadful!”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve been frightened.” Mrs. Grose’s eyes expressed

plainly that _she_ had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well

her place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience.

Oh, it was quite settled that she _must_ share! “Just what you saw from

the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What _I_ saw—just

before—was much worse.”

Her hand tightened. “What was it?”

“An extraordinary man. Looking in.”

“What extraordinary man?”

“I haven’t the least idea.”

Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. “Then where is he gone?”

“I know still less.”

“Have you seen him before?”

“Yes—once. On the old tower.”

She could only look at me harder. “Do you mean he’s a stranger?”

“Oh, very much!”

“Yet you didn’t tell me?”

“No—for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed—”

Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. “Ah, I haven’t

guessed!” she said very simply. “How can I if _you_ don’t imagine?”

“I don’t in the very least.”

“You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?”

“And on this spot just now.”

Mrs. Grose looked round again. “What was he doing on the tower?”

“Only standing there and looking down at me.”

She thought a minute. “Was he a gentleman?”