The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (bill gates books to read TXT) 📕

things in this than one that Lord Mark might have taken up; but in a minute he had made his choice. “Ah then, I’m nowhere, for I’m afraid I’m not sorry for you in the least. What do you make then,” he asked, “of your success?”

“Why, just the great reason of all. It’s just because our friend there sees it that she pities me. She understands,” Milly said; “she’s better than any of you. She’s beautiful.”

He appeared struck with this at last⁠—with the point the girl made of it; to which she came back even after a diversion created by a dish presented between them. “Beautiful in character, I see. Is she so? You must tell me about her.”

Milly wondered. “But haven’t you known her longer than I? Haven’t you seen her for yourself?”

“No⁠—I’ve failed with her. It’s no use. I don’t make her out. And I assure you I really should like to.” His assurance had in fact for his companion a positive suggestion of sincerity; he affected her as now saying something that he felt; and she was the more struck with it as she was still conscious of the failure even of curiosity he had just shown in respect to herself. She had meant something⁠—though indeed for herself almost only⁠—in speaking of their friend’s natural pity; it had been a note, doubtless, of questionable taste, but it had quavered out in spite of her; and he had not so much as cared to inquire “Why ‘natural’?” Not that it wasn’t really much better for her that he shouldn’t: explanations would in truth have taken her much too far. Only she now perceived that, in comparison, her word about this other person really “drew” him; and there were things in that, probably, many things, as to which she would learn more and which glimmered there already as part and parcel of that larger “real” with which, in her new situation, she was to be beguiled. It was in fact at the very moment, this element, not absent from what Lord Mark was further saying. “So you’re wrong, you see, as to our knowing all about each other. There are cases where we break down. I at any rate give her up⁠—up, that is, to you. You must do her for me⁠—tell me, I mean, when you know more. You’ll notice,” he pleasantly wound up, “that I’ve confidence in you.”

“Why shouldn’t you have?” Milly asked, observing in this, as she thought, a fine, though, for such a man, a surprisingly artless, fatuity. It was as if there might have been a question of her falsifying for the sake of her own show⁠—that is of her honesty not being proof against her desire to keep well with him herself. She didn’t, none the less, otherwise protest against his remark; there was something else she was occupied in seeing. It was the handsome girl alone, one of his own species and his own society, who had made him feel uncertain; of his certainties about a mere little American, a cheap exotic, imported almost wholesale, and whose habitat, with its conditions of climate, growth, and cultivation, its immense profusion, but its few varieties and thin development, he was perfectly satisfied. The marvel was, too, that Milly understood his satisfaction⁠—feeling that she expressed the truth in presently saying: “Of course; I make out that she must be difficult; just as I see that I myself must be easy.” And that was what, for all the rest of this occasion, remained with her⁠—as the most interesting thing that could remain. She was more and more content herself to be easy; she would have been resigned, even had it been brought straighter home to her, to passing for a cheap exotic. Provisionally, at any rate, that protected her wish to keep herself, with Lord Mark, in abeyance. They had all affected her as inevitably knowing each other, and if the handsome girl’s place among them was something even their initiation couldn’t deal with⁠—why, then, she would indeed be a quantity.

II

That sense of quantities, separate or mixed, was indeed doubtless what most prevailed at first for our slightly gasping American pair; it found utterance for them in their frequent remark to each other that they had no one but themselves to thank. It dropped from Milly more than once that if she had ever known it was so easy⁠—! though her exclamation mostly ended without completing her idea. This, however, was a trifle to Mrs. Stringham, who cared little whether she meant that in this case she would have come sooner. She couldn’t have come sooner, and she perhaps, on the contrary, meant⁠—for it would have been like her⁠—that she wouldn’t have come at all; why it was so easy being at any rate a matter as to which her companion had begun quickly to pick up views. Susie kept some of these lights for the present to herself, since, freely communicated, they might have been a little disturbing; with which, moreover, the quantities that we speak of as surrounding the two ladies were, in many cases, quantities of things⁠—and of other things⁠—to talk about. Their immediate lesson, accordingly, was that they just had been caught up by the incalculable strength of a wave that was actually holding them aloft and that would naturally dash them wherever it liked. They meanwhile, we hasten to add, make the best of their precarious position, and if Milly had had no other help for it she would have found not a little in the sight of Susan Shepherd’s state. The girl had had nothing to say to her, for three days, about the “success” announced by Lord Mark⁠—which they saw, besides, otherwise established; she was too taken up, too touched, by Susie’s own exaltation. Susie glowed in the light of her justified faith; everything had happened that she had been acute enough to think least probable; she had appealed to a possible delicacy in Maud Manningham⁠—a