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

she doesn’t, however, herself in the least understand⁠—and give up one’s time, and everything else, to it.” It struck the elder friend that she spoke with an almost unprecedented approach to sharpness; as if Mrs. Condrip had been rather specially disconcerting. Never yet so much as just of late had Mrs. Stringham seen her companion as exalted, and by the very play of something within, into a vague golden air that left irritation below. That was the great thing with Milly⁠—it was her characteristic poetry; or at least it was Susan Shepherd’s. “But she made a point,” the former continued, “of my keeping what she says from Kate. I’m not to mention that she has spoken.”

“And why,” Mrs. Stringham presently asked, “is Mr. Densher so dreadful?”

Milly had, she thought, an hesitation⁠—something that suggested a fuller talk with Mrs. Condrip than she inclined perhaps to report. “It isn’t so much he himself.” Then the girl spoke a little as for the romance of it; one could never tell, with her, where romance would come in. “It’s the state of his fortunes.”

“And is that very bad?”

“He has no ‘private means,’ and no prospect of any. He has no income, and no ability, according to Mrs. Condrip, to make one. He’s as poor, she calls it, as ‘poverty,’ and she says she knows what that is.”

Again Mrs. Stringham considered, and it presently produced something. “But isn’t he brilliantly clever?”

Milly had also then an instant that was not quite fruitless. “I haven’t the least idea.”

To which, for the time, Susie only answered “Oh!”⁠—though by the end of a minute she had followed it with a slightly musing “I see”; and that in turn with: “It’s quite what Maud Lowder thinks.”

“That he’ll never do anything?”

“No⁠—quite the contrary: that he’s exceptionally able.”

“Oh yes; I know”⁠—Milly had again, in reference to what her friend had already told her of this, her little tone of a moment before. “But Mrs. Condrip’s own great point is that Aunt Maud herself won’t hear of any such person. Mr. Densher, she holds that’s the way, at any rate, it was explained to me⁠—won’t ever be either a public man or a rich man. If he were public she’d be willing, as I understand, to help him; if he were rich⁠—without being anything else⁠—she’d do her best to swallow him. As it is, she taboos him.”

“In short,” said Mrs. Stringham as with a private purpose, “she told you, the sister, all about it. But Mrs. Lowder likes him,” she added.

“Mrs. Condrip didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, she does, all the same, my dear, extremely.”

“Then there it is!” On which, with a drop and one of those sudden, slightly sighing surrenders to a vague reflux and a general fatigue that had recently more than once marked themselves for her companion, Milly turned away. Yet the matter was not left so, that night, between them, albeit neither perhaps could afterwards have said which had first come back to it. Milly’s own nearest approach, at least, for a little, to doing so, was to remark that they appeared all⁠—everyone they saw⁠—to think tremendously of money. This prompted in Susie a laugh, not untender, the innocent meaning of which was that it came, as a subject for indifference, money did, easier to some people than to others: she made the point in fairness, however, that you couldn’t have told, by any too crude transparency of air, what place it held for Maud Manningham. She did her worldliness with grand proper silences⁠—if it mightn’t better be put perhaps that she did her detachment with grand occasional pushes. However Susie put it, in truth, she was really, in justice to herself, thinking of the difference, as favourites of fortune, between her old friend and her new. Aunt Maud sat somehow in the midst of her money, founded on it and surrounded by it, even if with a clever high manner about it, her manner of looking, hard and bright, as if it weren’t there. Milly, about hers, had no manner at all⁠—which was possibly, from a point of view, a fault: she was at any rate far away on the edge of it, and you hadn’t, as might be said, in order to get at her nature, to traverse, by whatever avenue, any piece of her property. It was clear, on the other hand, that Mrs. Lowder was keeping her wealth as for purposes, imaginations, ambitions, that would figure as large, as honourably unselfish, on the day they should take effect. She would impose her will, but her will would be only that a person or two shouldn’t lose a benefit by not submitting if they could be made to submit. To Milly, as so much younger, such far views couldn’t be imputed: there was nobody she was supposable as interested for. It was too soon, since she wasn’t interested for herself. Even the richest woman, at her age, lacked motive, and Milly’s motive doubtless had plenty of time to arrive. She was meanwhile beautiful, simple, sublime without it⁠—whether missing it and vaguely reaching out for it or not; and with it, for that matter, in the event, would really be these things just as much. Only then she might very well have, like Aunt Maud, a manner. Such were the connections, at all events, in which the colloquy of our two ladies freshly flickered up⁠—in which it came round that the elder asked the younger if she had herself, in the afternoon, named Mr. Densher as an acquaintance.

“Oh no⁠—I said nothing of having seen him. I remembered,” the girl explained, “Mrs. Lowder’s wish.”

“But that,” her friend observed after a moment, “was for silence to Kate.”

“Yes⁠—but Mrs. Condrip would immediately have told Kate.”

“Why so?⁠—since she must dislike to talk about him.”

“Mrs. Condrip must?” Milly thought. “What she would like most is that her sister should be brought to think ill of him; and if anything she can tell her will help that⁠—” But Milly dropped suddenly here, as if her companion would see.

Her companion’s interest, however, was all for what she herself saw. “You mean she’ll