“And he so dreadfully below,” said Mrs. Grose.
I felt that I doubtless needn’t press too hard, in such company, on the
place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an
acceptance of my companion’s own measure of my predecessor’s abasement.
There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my
full vision—on the evidence—of our employer’s late clever, good-looking
“own” man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. “The fellow was a
hound.”
Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense
of shades. “I’ve never seen one like him. He did what he wished.”
“With _her?_”
“With them all.”
It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again
appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation
of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out
with decision: “It must have been also what _she_ wished!”
Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at
the same time: “Poor woman—she paid for it!”
“Then you do know what she died of?” I asked.
“No—I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn’t;
and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!”
“Yet you had, then, your idea—”
“Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes—as to that. She couldn’t have
stayed. Fancy it here—for a governess! And afterward I imagined—and I
still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful.”
“Not so dreadful as what _I_ do,” I replied; on which I must have shown
her—as I was indeed but too conscious—a front of miserable defeat. It
brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed touch
of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the
other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly
breast, and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do it!” I sobbed in
despair; “I don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I
dreamed—they’re lost!”