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

breath it wouldn’t be, she could feel, by Mrs. Lowder’s fault. One of the last things she was afterwards to recall of this was Aunt Maud’s going on to say that she and Kate must stand together because together they could do anything. It was for Kate of course she was essentially planning; but the plan, enlarged and uplifted now, somehow required Milly’s prosperity too for its full operation, just as Milly’s prosperity at the same time involved Kate’s. It was nebulous yet, it was slightly confused, but it was unmistakably free and genial, and it made our young woman understand things Kate had said of her aunt’s possibilities as well as characterisations that had fallen from Susan Shepherd. One of the most frequent on the lips of the latter had been that dear Maud was a natural force. II

A prime reason, we must add, why sundry impressions were not to be fully present to the girl till later on was that they yielded at this stage, with an effect of sharp supersession, to a detached quarter of an hour⁠—her only one⁠—with Lord Mark. “Have you seen the picture in the house, the beautiful one that’s so like you?”⁠—he was asking that as he stood before her; having come up at last with his smooth intimation that any wire he had pulled and yet wanted not to remind her of wasn’t quite a reason for his having no joy at all.

“I’ve been through rooms and I’ve seen pictures. But if I’m ‘like’ anything so beautiful as most of them seemed to me⁠—!” It needed in short for Milly some evidence, which he only wanted to supply. She was the image of the wonderful Bronzino, which she must have a look at on every ground. He had thus called her off and led her away; the more easily that the house within was above all what had already drawn round her its mystic circle. Their progress, meanwhile, was not of the straightest; it was an advance, without haste, through innumerable natural pauses and soft concussions, determined for the most part by the appearance before them of ladies and gentlemen, singly, in couples, in groups, who brought them to a stand with an inveterate “I say, Mark.” What they said she never quite made out; it was their all so domestically knowing him, and his knowing them, that mainly struck her, while her impression, for the rest, was but of fellow-strollers more vaguely afloat than themselves, supernumeraries mostly a little battered, whether as jaunty males or as ostensibly elegant women. They might have been moving a good deal by a momentum that had begun far back, but they were still brave and personable, still warranted for continuance as long again, and they gave her, in especial collectively, a sense of pleasant voices, pleasanter than those of actors, of friendly, empty words and kind, lingering eyes. The lingering eyes looked her over, the lingering eyes were what went, in almost confessed simplicity, with the pointless “I say, Mark”; and what was really most sensible of all was that, as a pleasant matter of course, if she didn’t mind, he seemed to suggest their letting people, poor dear things, have the benefit of her.

The odd part was that he made her herself believe, for amusement, in the benefit, measured by him in mere manner⁠—for wonderful, of a truth, was, as a means of expression, his slightness of emphasis⁠—that her present good-nature conferred. It was, as she could easily see, a mild common carnival of good-nature⁠—a mass of London people together, of sorts and sorts, but who mainly knew each other and who, in their way, did, no doubt, confess to curiosity. It had gone round that she was there; questions about her would be passing; the easiest thing was to run the gauntlet with him⁠—just as the easiest thing was in fact to trust him generally. Couldn’t she know for herself, passively, how little harm they meant her?⁠—to that extent that it made no difference whether or not he introduced them. The strangest thing of all for Milly was perhaps the uplifted assurance and indifference with which she could simply give back the particular bland stare that appeared in such cases to mark civilisation at its highest. It was so little her fault, this oddity of what had “gone round” about her, that to accept it without question might be as good a way as another of feeling life. It was inevitable to supply the probable description⁠—that of the awfully rich young American who was so queer to behold, but nice, by all accounts, to know; and she had really but one instant of speculation as to fables or fantasies perchance originally launched. She asked herself once only if Susie could, inconceivably, have been blatant about her; for the question, on the spot, was really blown away forever. She knew in fact on the spot and with sharpness just why she had “elected” Susan Shepherd: she had had from the first hour the conviction of her being precisely the person in the world least possibly a trumpeter. So it wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t their fault, and anything might happen that would, and everything now again melted together, and kind eyes were always kind eyes⁠—if it were never to be worse than that! She got with her companion into the house; they brushed, beneficently, past all their accidents. The Bronzino was, it appeared, deep within, and the long afternoon light lingered for them on patches of old colour and waylaid them, as they went, in nooks and opening vistas.

It was all the while for Milly as if Lord Mark had really had something other than this spoken pretext in view; as if there were something he wanted to say to her and were only⁠—consciously yet not awkwardly, just delicately⁠—hanging fire. At the same time it was as if the thing had practically been said by the moment they came in sight of