The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 Page 2

  BOOK SECOND

  III

  Merton Densher, who passed the best hours of each night at the officeof his newspaper, had at times, during the day, to make up for it, asense, or at least an appearance, of leisure, in accordance with whichhe was not infrequently to be met, in different parts of the town, atmoments when men of business are hidden from the public eye. More thanonce, during the present winter's end, he had deviated, toward threeo'clock, or toward four, into Kensington Gardens, where he might for awhile, on each occasion, have been observed to demean himself as aperson with nothing to do. He made his way indeed, for the most part,with a certain directness, over to the north side; but once that groundwas reached his behaviour was noticeably wanting in point. He movedseemingly at random from alley to alley; he stopped for no reason andremained idly agaze; he sat down in a chair and then changed to abench; after which he walked about again, only again to repeat both thevagueness and the vivacity. Distinctly, he was a man either withnothing at all to do or with ever so much to think about; and it wasnot to be denied that the impression he might often thus easily makehad the effect of causing the burden of proof, in certain directions,to rest on him. It was a little the fault of his aspect, his personalmarks, which made it almost impossible to name his profession.

  He was a longish, leanish, fairish young Englishman, not unamenable, oncertain sides, to classification--as for instance by being a gentleman,by being rather specifically one of the educated, one of the generallysound and generally pleasant; yet, though to that degree neitherextraordinary nor abnormal, he would have failed to play straight intoan observer's hands. He was young for the House of Commons, he wasloose for the army. He was refined, as might have been said, for thecity, and, quite apart from the cut of his cloth, he was sceptical, itmight have been felt, for the church. On the other hand he wascredulous for diplomacy, or perhaps even for science, while he wasperhaps at the same time too much in his mere senses for poetry, andyet too little in them for art. You would have got fairly near him bymaking out in his eyes the potential recognition of ideas; but youwould have quite fallen away again on the question of the ideasthemselves. The difficulty with Densher was that he looked vaguewithout looking weak--idle without looking empty. It was the accident,possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; ofhis straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the latter, neatlysmooth, and apt, into the bargain, at the time of quite other callsupon it, to throw itself suddenly back and, supported behind by hisuplifted arms and interlocked hands, place him for unconscionableperiods in communion with the ceiling, the tree-tops, the sky. He wasin short visibly absent-minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop whatwas near and to take up what was far; he was more a respecter, ingeneral, than a follower of custom. He suggested above all, however,that wondrous state of youth in which the elements, the metals more orless precious, are so in fusion and fermentation that the question ofthe final stamp, the pressure that fixes the value, must wait forcomparative coolness. And it was a mark of his interesting mixture thatif he was irritable it was by a law of considerable subtlety--a lawthat, in intercourse with him, it might be of profit, though not easy,to master. One of the effects of it was that he had for you surprisesof tolerance as well as of temper.

  He loitered, on the best of the relenting days, the several occasionswe speak of, along the part of the Gardens nearest to Lancaster Gate,and when, always, in due time, Kate Croy came out of her aunt's house,crossed the road and arrived by the nearest entrance, there was ageneral publicity in the proceeding which made it slightly anomalous.If their meeting was to be bold and free it might have taken placewithin doors; if it was to be shy or secret it might have taken placealmost anywhere better than under Mrs. Lowder's windows. They failedindeed to remain attached to that spot; they wandered and strolled,taking in the course of more than one of these interviews aconsiderable walk, or else picked out a couple of chairs under one ofthe great trees and sat as much apart--apart from every one else--aspossible. But Kate had, each time, at first, the air of wishing toexpose herself to pursuit and capture if those things were in question.She made the point that she was not underhand, any more than she wasvulgar; that the Gardens were charming in themselves and this use ofthem a matter of taste; and that, if her aunt chose to glare at herfrom the drawing-room or to cause her to be tracked and overtaken, shecould at least make it convenient that this should be easily done. Thefact was that the relation between these young persons abounded in suchoddities as were not inaptly symbolised by assignations that had a gooddeal more appearance than motive. Of the strength of the tie that heldthem we shall sufficiently take the measure; but it was meanwhilealmost obvious that if the great possibility had come up for them ithad done so, to an exceptional degree, under the protection of thefamous law of contraries. Any deep harmony that might eventually governthem would not be the result of their having much in common--havinganything, in fact, but their affection and would really find itsexplanation in some sense, on the part of each, of being poor where theother was rich. It is nothing new indeed that generous young personsoften admire most what nature hasn't given them--from which it wouldappear, after all, that our friends were both generous.

  Merton Densher had repeatedly said to himself--and from far back--thathe should be a fool not to marry a woman whose value would be in herdifferences; and Kate Croy, though without having quite sophilosophised, had quickly recognised in the young man a preciousunlikeness. He represented what her life had never given her andcertainly, without some such aid as his, never would give her; all thehigh, dim things she lumped together as of the mind. It was on the sideof the mind that Densher was rich for her, and mysterious and strong;and he had rendered her in especial the sovereign service of makingthat element real. She had had, all her days, to take it terribly ontrust; no creature she had ever encountered having been able in anydegree to testify for it directly. Vague rumours of its existence hadmade their precarious way to her; but nothing had, on the whole, struckher as more likely than that she should live and die without the chanceto verify them. The chance had come--it was an extraordinary one--onthe day she first met Densher; and it was to the girl's lasting honourthat she knew on the spot what she was in the presence of. Thatoccasion indeed, for everything that straightway flowered in it, wouldbe worthy of high commemoration Densher's perception went out to meetthe young woman's and quite kept pace with her own recognition. Havingso often concluded on the fact of his weakness, as he called it, forlife--his strength merely for thought--life, he logically opined, waswhat he must somehow arrange to annex and possess. This was so much anecessity that thought by itself only went on in the void; it was fromthe immediate air of life that it must draw its breath. So the youngman, ingenious but large, critical but ardent too, made out both hiscase and Kate Croy's. They had originally met before her mother'sdeath--an occasion marked for her as the last pleasure permitted by theapproach of that event; after which the dark months had interposed ascreen and, for all Kate knew, made the end one with the beginning.

  The beginning--to which she often went back--had been a scene, for ouryoung woman, of supreme brilliancy; a party given at a "gallery" hiredby a hostess who fished with big nets. A Spanish dancer, understood tobe at that moment the delight of the town, an American reciter, the joyof a kindred people, an Hungarian fiddler, the wonder of the world atlarge--in the name of these and other attractions the company in which,by a rare privilege, Kate found herself had been freely convoked. Shelived under her mother's roof, as she considered, obscurely, and wasacquainted with few persons who entertained on that scale; but she hadhad dealings with two or three connected, as appeared, with such--twoor three through whom the stream of hospitality, filtered or diffused,could thus now and then spread to outlying receptacles. A good-naturedlady in fine, a friend of her mother and a relative of the lady of thegallery, had offered to take her to the party in question and had therefortified her, further, with two or three of those introductions that,at large parties, lead to othe
r things--that had at any rate, on thisoccasion, culminated for her in conversation with a tall, fair,slightly unbrushed and rather awkward, but on the whole not dreary,young man. The young man had affected her as detached, as--it wasindeed what he called himself--awfully at sea, as much more distinctfrom what surrounded them than any one else appeared to be, and even asprobably quite disposed to be making his escape when pulled up to beplaced in relation with her. He gave her his word for it indeed, thatsame evening, that only their meeting had prevented his flight, butthat now he saw how sorry he should have been to miss it. This pointthey had reached by midnight, and though in respect to such remarkseverything was in the tone, the tone was by midnight there too. She hadhad originally her full apprehension of his coerced, certainly of hisvague, condition--full apprehensions often being with her immediate;then she had had her equal consciousness that, within five minutes,something between them had--well, she couldn't call it anything but_come._ It was nothing, but it was somehow everything--it was thatsomething for each of them had happened.

  They had found themselves looking at each other straight, and for alonger time on end than was usual even at parties in galleries; butthat, after all, would have been a small affair, if there hadn't beensomething else with it. It wasn't, in a word, simply that their eyeshad met; other conscious organs, faculties, feelers had met as well,and when Kate afterwards imaged to herself the sharp, deep fact she sawit, in the oddest way, as a particular performance. She had observed aladder against a garden wall, and had trusted herself so to climb it asto be able to see over into the probable garden on the other side. Onreaching the top she had found herself face to face with a gentlemanengaged in a like calculation at the same moment, and the two inquirershad remained confronted on their ladders. The great point was that forthe rest of that evening they had been perched--they had not climbeddown; and indeed, during the time that followed, Kate at least had hadthe perched feeling--it was as if she were there aloft without aretreat. A simpler expression of all this is doubtless but that theyhad taken each other in with interest; and without a happy hazard sixmonths later the incident would have closed in that account of it. Theaccident, meanwhile, had been as natural as anything in London ever is:Kate had one afternoon found herself opposite Mr. Densher on theUnderground Railway. She had entered the train at Sloane Square to goto Queen's Road, and the carriage in which she had found a place wasall but full. Densher was already in it--on the other bench and at thefurthest angle; she was sure of him before they had again started. Theday and the hour were darkness, there were six other persons, and shehad been busy placing herself; but her consciousness had gone to him asstraight as if they had come together in some bright level of thedesert. They had on neither part a second's hesitation they lookedacross the choked compartment exactly as if she had known he would bethere and he had expected her to come in; so that, though in theconditions they could only exchange the greeting of movements, smiles,silence, it would have been quite in the key of these passages thatthey should have alighted for ease at the very next station. Kate wasin fact sure that the very next station was the young man's truegoal--which made it clear that he was going on only from the wish tospeak to her. He had to go on, for this purpose, to High Street,Kensington, as it was not till then that the exit of a passenger gavehim his chance.

  His chance put him, however, in quick possession of the seat facingher, the alertness of his capture of which seemed to show her hisimpatience. It helped them, moreover, with strangers on either side,little to talk; though this very restriction perhaps made such a markfor them as nothing else could have done. If the fact that theiropportunity had again come round for them could be so intenselyexpressed between them without a word, they might very well feel on thespot that it had not come round for nothing. The extraordinary part ofthe matter was that they were not in the least meeting where they hadleft off, but ever so much further on, and that these added links addedstill another between High Street and Notting Hill Gate, and thenbetween the latter station and Queen's Road an extension reallyinordinate. At Notting Hill Gate, Kate's right-hand neighbourdescended, whereupon Densher popped straight into that seat; only therewas not much gained when a lady, the next instant, popped intoDensher's. He could say almost nothing to her--she scarce knew, atleast, what he said; she was so occupied with a certainty that one ofthe persons opposite, a youngish man with a single eyeglass, which hekept constantly in position, had made her out from the first asvisibly, as strangely affected. If such a person made her out, whatthen did Densher do?--a question in truth sufficiently answered when,on their reaching her station, he instantly followed her out of thetrain. That had been the real beginning--the beginning of everythingelse; the other time, the time at the party, had been but the beginningof _that._ Never in life before had she so let herself go; for alwaysbefore--so far as small adventures could have been in question forher--there had been, by the vulgar measure, more to go upon. He hadwalked with her to Lancaster Gate, and then she had walked with himaway from it--for all the world, she said to herself, like thehousemaid giggling to the baker.

  This appearance, she was afterwards to feel, had been all in order fora relation that might precisely best be described in the terms of thebaker and the housemaid. She could say to herself that from that hourthey had kept company; that had come to represent, technicallyspeaking, alike the range and the limit of their tie. He had on thespot, naturally, asked leave to call upon her--which, as a young personwho wasn't really young, who didn't pretend to be a sheltered flower,she as rationally gave. That--she was promptly clear about it--was nowher only possible basis; she was just the contemporary London female,highly modern, inevitably battered, honourably free. She had of coursetaken her aunt straight into her confidence--had gone through the formof asking her leave; and she subsequently remembered that though, onthis occasion, she had left the history of her new alliance as scant asthe facts themselves, Mrs. Lowder had struck her at the timesurprisingly mild. It had been, in every way, the occasion, full of thereminder that her hostess was deep: it was definitely then that she hadbegun to ask herself what Aunt Maud was, in vulgar parlance, "up to.""You may receive, my dear, whom you like"--that was what Aunt Maud, whoin general objected to people's doing as they liked, had replied; andit bore, this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into. There weremany explanations, and they were all amusing--amusing, that is, in theline of the sombre and brooding amusement, cultivated by Kate in heractual high retreat. Merton Densher came the very next Sunday; but Mrs.Lowder was so consistently magnanimous as to make it possible to herniece to see him alone. She saw him, however, on the Sunday following,in order to invite him to dinner; and when, after dining, he cameagain--which he did three times, she found means to treat his visit aspreponderantly to herself. Kate's conviction that she didn't like himmade that remarkable; it added to the evidence, by this timevoluminous, that she was remarkable all round. If she had been, in theway of energy, merely usual, she would have kept her dislike direct;whereas it was now as if she were seeking to know him in order to seebest where to "have" him. That was one of the reflections made in ouryoung woman's high retreat; she smiled from her lookout, in the silencethat was only the fact of hearing irrelevant sounds, as she caught thetruth that you could easily accept people when you wanted them so to bedelivered to you. When Aunt Maud wished them despatched, it was not tobe done by deputy; it was clearly always a matter reserved for her ownhand. But what made the girl wonder most was the implications of somuch diplomacy in respect to her own value. What view might she take ofher position in the light of this appearance that her companion fearedso, as yet, to upset her? It was as if Densher were accepted partlyunder the dread that if he hadn't been she would act in resentment.Hadn't her aunt considered the danger that she would in that case havebroken off, have seceded? The danger was exaggerated--she would havedone nothing so gross; but that, it seemed, was the way Mrs. Lowder sawher and believed her to be reckoned with. What importance therefore didshe really attach to her, what st
range interest could she take on theirkeeping on terms? Her father and her sister had their answer tothis--even without knowing how the question struck her; they saw thelady of Lancaster Gate as panting to make her fortune, and theexplanation of that appetite was that, on the accident of a nearer viewthan she had before enjoyed, she had been charmed, been dazzled. Theyapproved, they admired in her one of the belated fancies of rich,capricious, violent old women--the more marked, moreover, because theresult of no plot; and they piled up the possible results for theperson concerned. Kate knew what to think of her own power thus tocarry by storm; she saw herself as handsome, no doubt, but as hard, andfelt herself as clever but as cold; and as so much too imperfectlyambitious, furthermore, that it was a pity, for a quiet life, shecouldn't settle to be either finely or stupidly indifferent. Herintelligence sometimes kept her still--too still--but her want of itwas restless; so that she got the good, it seemed to her, of neitherextreme. She saw herself at present, none the less, in a situation, andeven her sad, disillusioned mother, dying, but with Aunt Maudinterviewing the nurse on the stairs, had not failed to remind her thatit was of the essence of situations to be, under Providence, worked.The dear woman had died in the belief that she was actually working theone then produced.

  Kate took one of her walks with Densher just after her visit to Mr.Croy; but most of it went, as usual, to their sitting in talk. Theyhad, under the trees, by the lake, the air of old friends--phases ofapparent earnestness, in particular, in which they might have beensettling every question in their vast young world; and periods ofsilence, side by side, perhaps even more, when "a long engagement!"would have been the final reading of the signs on the part of a passerstruck with them, as it was so easy to be. They would have presentedthemselves thus as very old friends rather than as young persons whohad met for the first time but a year before and had spent most of theinterval without contact. It was indeed for each, already, as if theywere older friends; and though the succession of their meetings might,between them, have been straightened out, they only had a confusedsense of a good many, very much alike, and a confused intention of agood many more, as little different as possible. The desire to keepthem just as they were had perhaps to do with the fact that in spite ofthe presumed diagnosis of the stranger there had been for them as yetno formal, no final understanding. Densher had at the very firstpressed the question, but that, it had been easy to reply, was toosoon so that a singular thing had afterwards happened. They hadaccepted their acquaintance as too short for an engagement, but theyhad treated it as long enough for almost anything else, and marriagewas somehow before them like a temple without an avenue. They belongedto the temple and they met in the grounds; they were in the stage atwhich grounds in general offered much scattered refreshment. But Katehad meanwhile had so few confidants that she wondered at the source ofher father's suspicions. The diffusion of rumour was of course, inLondon, remarkable, and for Marian not less--as Aunt Maud touchedneither directly--the mystery had worked. No doubt she had been seen.Of course she had been seen. She had taken no trouble not to be seen,and it was a thing, clearly, she was incapable of taking. But she hadbeen seen how?--and _what_ was there to see? She was in love--she knewthat: but it was wholly her own business, and she had the sense ofhaving conducted herself, of still so doing, with almost violentconformity.

  "I've an idea--in fact I feel sure--that Aunt Maud means to write toyou; and I think you had better know it." So much as this she said tohim as soon as they met, but immediately adding to it: "So as to makeup your mind how to take her. I know pretty well what she'll say toyou."

  "Then will you kindly tell me?"

  She thought a little. "I can't do that. I should spoil it. She'll dothe best for her own idea."

  "Her idea, you mean, that I'm a sort of a scoundrel; or, at the best,not good enough for you?"

  They were side by side again in their penny chairs, and Kate hadanother pause. "Not good enough for _her."_

  "Oh, I see. And that's necessary."

  He put it as a truth rather more than as a question but there had beenplenty of truths between them that each had contradicted. Kate,however, let this one sufficiently pass, only saying the next moment:"She has behaved extraordinarily."

  "And so have we," Densher declared. "I think, you know, we've beenawfully decent."

  "For ourselves, for each other, for people in general, yes. But not for_her._ For her," said Kate, "we've been monstrous. She has been givingus rope. So if she does send for you," the girl repeated, "you mustknow where you are."

  "That I always know. It's where _you_ are that concerns me."

  "Well," said Kate after an instant, "her idea of that is what you'llhave from her." He gave her a long look, and whatever else people whowouldn't let her alone might have wished, for her advancement, his longlooks were the thing in the world she could never have enough of. Whatshe felt was that, whatever might happen, she must keep them, must makethem most completely her possession and it was already strange enoughthat she reasoned, or at all events began to act, as if she might workthem in with other and alien things, privately cherish them, and yet,as regards the rigour of it, pay no price. She looked it well in theface, she took it intensely home, that they were lovers; she rejoicedto herself and, frankly, to him, in their wearing of the name; but,distinguished creature that, in her way, she was, she took a view ofthis character that scarce squared with the conventional. The characteritself she insisted on as their right, taking that so for granted thatit didn't seem even bold; but Densher, though he agreed with her, foundhimself moved to wonder at her simplifications, her values. Life mightprove difficult--was evidently going to; but meanwhile they had eachother, and that was everything. This was her reasoning, but meanwhile,for _him,_ each other was what they didn't have, and it was just thepoint. Repeatedly, however, it was a point that, in the face of strangeand special things, he judged it rather awkwardly gross to urge. It wasimpossible to keep Mrs. Lowder out of their scheme. She stood there tooclose to it and too solidly; it had to open a gate, at a given point,do what they would to take her in. And she came in, always, while theysat together rather helplessly watching her, as in a coach-in-four; shedrove round their prospect as the principal lady at the circus drivesround the ring, and she stopped the coach in the middle to alight withmajesty. It was our young man's sense that she was magnificentlyvulgar, but yet, quite, that this wasn't all. It wasn't with hervulgarity that she felt his want of means, though that might havehelped her richly to embroider it; nor was it with the same infirmitythat she was strong, original, dangerous.

  His want of means--of means sufficient for anyone but himself--wasreally the great ugliness, and was, moreover, at no time more ugly forhim than when it rose there, as it did seem to rise, shameless, face toface with the elements in Kate's life colloquially and convenientlyclassed by both of them as funny. He sometimes indeed, for that matter,asked himself if these elements were as funny as the innermost fact, sooften vivid to him, of his own consciousness--his private inability tobelieve he should ever be rich. His conviction on this head was intruth quite positive and a thing by itself; he failed, after analysis,to understand it, though he had naturally more lights on it than anyone else. He knew how it subsisted in spite of an equal consciousnessof his being neither mentally nor physically quite helpless, neither adunce nor a cripple; he knew it to be absolute, though secret, andalso, strange to say, about common undertakings, not discouraging, notprohibitive. Only now was he having to think if it were prohibitive inrespect to marriage; only now, for the first time, had he to weigh hiscase in scales. The scales, as he sat with Kate, often dangled in theline of his vision he saw them, large and black, while he talked orlistened, take, in the bright air, singular positions. Sometimes theright was down and sometimes the left; never a happy equipoise--one orthe other always kicking the beam. Thus was kept before him thequestion of whether it were more ignoble to ask a woman to take herchance with you, or to accept it from one's conscience that her chancecould be at the best but
one of the degrees of privation whether, too,otherwise, marrying for money mightn't after all be a smaller cause ofshame than the mere dread of marrying without. Through these variationsof mood and view, all the same, the mark on his forehead stood clear;he saw himself remain without whether he married or not. It was a lineon which his fancy could be admirably active; the innumerable ways ofmaking money were beautifully present to him; he could have handledthem, for his newspaper, as easily as he handled everything. He wasquite aware how he handled everything; it was another mark on hisforehead; the pair of smudges from the thumb of fortune, the brand onthe passive fleece, dated from the primal hour and kept each othercompany. He wrote, as for print, with deplorable ease; since there hadbeen nothing to stop him even at the age of ten, so there was as littleat twenty; it was part of his fate in the first place and part of thewretched public's in the second. The innumerable ways of making moneywere, no doubt, at all events, what his imagination often was busy withafter he had tilted his chair and thrown back his head with his handsclasped behind it. What would most have prolonged that attitude,moreover, was the reflection that the ways were ways only for others.Within the minute, now--however this might be--he was aware of a nearerview than he had yet quite had of those circumstances on hiscompanion's part that made least for simplicity of relation. He sawabove all how she saw them herself, for she spoke of them at presentwith the last frankness, telling him of her visit to her father andgiving him, in an account of her subsequent scene with her sister, aninstance of how she was perpetually reduced to patching up, in one wayor another, that unfortunate woman's hopes.

  "The tune," she exclaimed, "to which we're a failure as a family!" Withwhich he had it again all from her--and this time, as it seemed to him,more than all: the dishonour her father had brought them, his folly andcruelty and wickedness; the wounded state of her mother, abandoned,despoiled and helpless, yet, for the management of such a home asremained to them, dreadfully unreasonable too; the extinction of hertwo young brothers--one, at nineteen, the eldest of the house, bytyphoid fever, contracted at a poisonous little place, as they hadafterwards found out, that they had taken for a summer; the other, theflower of the flock, a middy on the _Britannia,_ dreadfully drowned,and not even by an accident at sea, but by cramp, unrescued, whilebathing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river during aholiday visit to the home of a shipmate. Then Marian's unnaturalmarriage, in itself a kind of spiritless turning of the other cheek tofortune: her actual wretchedness and plaintiveness, her greasychildren, her impossible claims, her odious visitors--these thingscompleted the proof of the heaviness, for them all, of the hand offate. Kate confessedly described them with an excess of impatience; itwas much of her charm for Densher that she gave in general that turn toher descriptions, partly as if to amuse him by free and humorouscolour, partly--and that charm was the greatest--as if to work off, forher own relief, her constant perception of the incongruity of things.She had seen the general show too early and too sharply, and she was sointelligent that she knew it and allowed for that misfortune; thereforewhen, in talk with him, she was violent and almost unfeminine, it wasalmost as if they had settled, for intercourse, on the short cut of thefantastic and the happy language of exaggeration. It had come to bedefinite between them at a primary stage that, if they could have noother straight way, the realm of thought at least was open to them.They could think whatever they liked about whatever they would--or, inother words, they could say it. Saying it for each other, for eachother alone, only of course added to the taste. The implication wasthereby constant that what they said when not together had no taste forthem at all, and nothing could have served more to launch them, atspecial hours, on their small floating island than such an assumptionthat they were only making believe everywhere else. Our young man, itmust be added, was conscious enough that it was Kate who profited mostby this particular play of the fact of intimacy. It always seemed tohim that she had more life than he to react from, and when sherecounted the dark disasters of her house and glanced at the hard, oddoffset of her present exaltation--since as exaltation it was apparentlyto be considered--he felt his own grey domestic annals to make littleshow. It was naturally, in all such reference, the question of herfather's character that engaged him most, but her picture of heradventure in Chirk Street gave him a sense of how little as yet thatcharacter was clear to him. What was it, to speak plainly, that Mr.Croy had originally done?

  "I don't know--and I don't want to. I only know that years and yearsago--when I was about fifteen--something or other happened that madehim impossible. I mean impossible for the world at large first, andthen, little by little, for mother. We of course didn't know it at thetime," Kate explained, "but we knew it later; and it was, oddly enough,my sister who first made out that he had done something. I can hear hernow--the way, one cold, black Sunday morning when, on account of anextraordinary fog, we had not gone to church, she broke it to me by theschool-room fire. I was reading a history-book by the lamp--when wedidn't go to church we had to read history-books--and I suddenly heardher say, out of the fog, which was in the room, and _apropos_ ofnothing: 'Papa has done something wicked.' And the curious thing wasthat I believed it on the spot and have believed it ever since, thoughshe could tell me nothing more--neither what was the wickedness, norhow she knew, nor what would happen to him, nor anything else about it.We had our sense, always, that all sorts of things _had_ happened, wereall the while happening, to him; so that when Marian only said she wassure, tremendously sure, that she had made it out for herself, but thatthat was enough, I took her word for it--it seemed somehow so natural.We were not, however, to ask mother--which made it more natural still,and I said never a word. But mother, strangely enough, spoke of it tome, in time, of her own accord very much later on. He hadn't been withus for ever so long, but we were used to that. She must have had somefear, some conviction that I had an idea, some idea of her own that itwas the best thing to do. She came out as abruptly as Marian had done:'If you hear anything against your father--anything I mean, except thathe's odious and vile--remember it's perfectly false.' That was the wayI knew--it was true, though I recall that I said to her then that I ofcourse knew it wasn't. She might have told me it was true, and yet havetrusted me to contradict fiercely enough any accusation of him that Ishould meet--to contradict it much more fiercely and effectively, Ithink, than she would have done herself. As it happens, however," thegirl went on, "I've never had occasion, and I've been conscious of itwith a sort of surprise. It has made the world, at times, seem moredecent. No one has so much as breathed to me. That has been a part ofthe silence, the silence that surrounds him, the silence that, for theworld, has washed him out. He doesn't exist for people. And yet I'm assure as ever. In fact, though I know no more than I did then, I'm moresure. And that," she wound up, "is what I sit here and tell you aboutmy own father. If you don't call it a proof of confidence I don't knowwhat will satisfy you."

  "It satisfies me beautifully," Densher declared, "but it doesn't, mydear child, very greatly enlighten me. You don't, you know, really tellme anything. It's so vague that what am I to think but that you mayvery well be mistaken? What has he done, if no one can name it?"

  "He has done everything."

  "Oh--everything! Everything's nothing."

  "Well then," said Kate, "he has done some particular thing. It'sknown--only, thank God, not to us. But it has been the end of him. Youcould doubtless find out with a little trouble. You can ask about."

  Densher for a moment said nothing; but the next moment he made it up."I wouldn't find out for the world, and I'd rather lose my tongue thanput a question."

  "And yet it's a part of me," said Kate.

  "A part of you?"

  "My father's dishonour." Then she sounded for him, but more deeply thanever yet, her note of proud, still pessimism. "How can such a thing asthat not be the great thing in one's life?"

  She had to take from him again, on this, one of his long looks, and shetook it to its deepest, its headiest dr
egs. "I shall ask you, for thegreat thing in your life," he said, "to depend on _me_ a little more."After which, just hesitating, "Doesn't he belong to some club?" heinquired.

  She had a grave headshake. "He used to--to many."

  "But he has dropped them?"

  "They've dropped _him._ Of that I'm sure. It ought to do for you. Ioffered him," the girl immediately continued--"and it was for that Iwent to him--to come and be with him, make a home for him so far as ispossible. But he won't hear of it."

  Densher took this in with visible, but generous, wonder. "You offeredhim--'impossible' as you describe him to me--to live with him and sharehis disadvantages?" The young man saw for the moment but the highbeauty of it. "You _are_ gallant!"

  "Because it strikes you as being brave for him?" She wouldn't in theleast have this. "It wasn't courage--it was the opposite. I did it tosave myself--to escape."

  He had his air, so constant at this stage, as of her giving him finerthings than any one to think about. "Escape from what?"

  "From everything."

  "Do you by any chance mean from me?"

  "No; I spoke to him of you, told him--or what amounted to it--that Iwould bring you, if he would allow it, with me."

  "But he won't allow it," said Densher.

  "Won't hear of it on any terms. He won't help me, won't save me, won'thold out a finger to me," Kate went on "he simply wriggles away, inhis inimitable manner, and throws me back."

  "Back then, after all, thank goodness," Densher concurred, "on me."

  But she spoke again as with the sole vision of the whole scene she hadevoked. "It's a pity, because you'd like him. He's wonderful--he'scharming." Her companion gave one of the laughs that marked in him,again, his feeling in her tone, inveterately, something that banishedthe talk of other women, so far as he knew other women, to the dulldesert of the conventional, and she had already continued. "He wouldmake himself delightful to you."

  "Even while objecting to me?"

  "Well, he likes to please," the girl explained--"personally. He wouldappreciate you and be clever with you. It's to _me_ he objects--that isas to my liking you."

  "Heaven be praised then," Densher exclaimed, "that you like me enoughfor the objection!"

  But she met it after an instant with some inconsequence. "I don't. Ioffered to give you up, if necessary, to go to him. But it made nodifference, and that's what I mean," she pursued, "by his declining meon any terms. The point is, you see, that I don't escape."

  Densher wondered. "But if you didn't wish to escape _me?"_

  "I wished to escape Aunt Maud. But he insists that it's through her andthrough her only that I may help him; just as Marian insists that it'sthrough her, and through her only, that I can help _her._ That's what Imean," she again explained, "by their turning me back."

  The young man thought. "Your sister turns you back too?"

  "Oh, with a push!"

  "But have you offered to live with your sister?"

  "I would in a moment if she'd have me. That's all my virtue--a narrowlittle family feeling. I've a small stupid piety--I don't know what tocall it." Kate bravely sustained it; she made it out. "Sometimes,alone, I've to smother my shrieks when I think of my poor mother. Shewent through things--they pulled her down; I know what they were now--Ididn't then, for I was a pig; and my position, compared with hers, isan insolence of success. That's what Marian keeps before me; that'swhat papa himself, as I say, so inimitably does. My position's a value,a great value, for them both"--she followed and followed. Lucid andironic, she knew no merciful muddle. "It's _the_ value--the only onethey have."

  Everything between our young couple moved today, in spite of theirpauses, their margin, to a quicker measure--the quickness and anxietyplaying lightning-like in the sultriness. Densher watched, decidedly,as he had never done before. "And the fact you speak of holds you!"

  "Of course, it holds me. It's a perpetual sound in my ears. It makes meask myself if I've any right to personal happiness, any right toanything but to be as rich and overflowing, as smart and shining, as Ican be made."

  Densher had a pause. "Oh, you might, with good luck, have the personalhappiness too."

  Her immediate answer to this was a silence like his own; after whichshe gave him straight in the face, but quite simply and quietly:"Darling!"

  It took him another moment; then he was also quiet and simple. "Willyou settle it by our being married to-morrow--as we can, with perfectease, civilly?"

  "Let us wait to arrange it," Kate presently replied, "till after you'veseen her."

  "Do you call that adoring me?" Densher demanded.

  They were talking, for the time, with the strangest mixture ofdeliberation and directness, and nothing could have been more in thetone of it than the way she at last said: "You're afraid of heryourself."

  He gave a smile a trifle glassy. "For young persons of a greatdistinction and a very high spirit, we're a caution!"

  "Yes," she took it straight up; "we're hideously intelligent. Butthere's fun in it too. We must get our fun where we can. I think," sheadded, and for that matter, not without courage, "our relation'sbeautiful. It's not a bit vulgar. I cling to some saving romance inthings."

  It made him break into a laugh which had more freedom than his smile."How you must be afraid you'll chuck me!"

  "No, no, _that_ would be vulgar. But, of course, I do see my danger,"she admitted, "of doing something base."

  "Then what can be so base as sacrificing me?"

  "I _shan't_ sacrifice you; don't cry out till you're hurt. I shallsacrifice nobody and nothing, and that's just my situation, that I wantand that I shall try for everything. That," she wound up, "is how I seemyself, and how I see you quite as much, acting for them."

  "For 'them'?" and the young man strongly, extravagantly marked hiscoldness. "Thank you!"

  "Don't you care for them?"

  "Why should I? What are they to me but a serious nuisance?"

  As soon as he had permitted himself this qualification of theunfortunate persons she so perversely cherished, he repented of hisroughness--and partly because he expected a flash from her. But it wasone of her finest sides that she sometimes flashed with a mere mildglow. "I don't see why you don't make out a little more that if weavoid stupidity we may do _all._ We may keep her."

  He stared. "Make her pension us?"

  "Well, wait at least till we have seen."

  He thought. "Seen what can be got out of her?"

  Kate for a moment said nothing. "After all I never asked her; never,when our troubles were at the worst, appealed to her nor went near her.She fixed upon me herself, settled on me with her wonderful gildedclaws."

  "You speak," Densher observed, "as if she were a vulture."

  "Call it an eagle--with a gilded beak as well, and with wings for greatflights. If she's a thing of the air, in short--say at once aballoon--I never myself got into her car. I was her choice."

  It had really, her sketch of the affair, a high colour and a greatstyle; at all of which he gazed a minute as at a picture by a master."What she must see in you!"

  "Wonders!" And, speaking it loud, she stood straight up. "Everything.There it is."

  Yes, there it was, and as she remained before him he continued to faceit. "So that what you mean is that I'm to do my part in somehowsquaring her?"

  "See her, see her," Kate said with impatience.

  "And grovel to her?"

  "Ah, do what you like!" And she walked in her impatience away.

  IV

  His eyes had followed her at this time quite long enough, before heovertook her, to make out more than ever, in the poise of her head, thepride of her step--he didn't know what best to call it--a part, atleast, of Mrs. Lowder's reasons. He consciously winced while he figuredhis presenting himself as a reason opposed to these; though, at thesame moment, with the source of Aunt Maud's inspiration thus beforehim, he was prepared to conform, by almost any abject attitude orprofitable compromise, to his companion's easy injunction.
He would doas _she_ liked--his own liking might come off as it would. He wouldhelp her to the utmost of his power; for, all the rest of that day andthe next, her easy injunction, tossed off that way as she turned herbeautiful back, was like the crack of a great whip in the blue air, thehigh element in which Mrs. Lowder hung. He wouldn't grovel perhaps--hewasn't quite ready for that; but he would be patient, ridiculous,reasonable, unreasonable, and above all deeply diplomatic. He would beclever, with all his cleverness--which he now shook hard, as hesometimes shook his poor, dear, shabby, old watch, to start it upagain. It wasn't, thank goodness, as if there weren't plenty of that,and with what they could muster between them it would be little to thecredit of their star, however pale, that defeat andsurrender--surrender so early, so immediate--should have to ensue. Itwas not indeed that he thought of that disaster as, at the worst, adirect sacrifice of their possibilities: he imaged--it which was enoughas some proved vanity, some exposed fatuity, in the idea of bringingMrs. Lowder round. When, shortly afterwards, in this lady's vastdrawing-room--the apartments at Lancaster Gate had struck him from thefirst as of prodigious extent--he awaited her, at her request, conveyedin a "reply-paid" telegram, his theory was that of their still clingingto their idea, though with a sense of the difficulty of it reallyenlarged to the scale of the place.

  He had the place for a long time--it seemed to him a quarter of anhour--to himself; and while Aunt Maud kept him and kept him, whileobservation and reflection crowded on him, he asked himself what was tobe expected of a person who could treat one like that. The visit, thehour were of her own proposing, so that her delay, no doubt, was butpart of a general plan of putting him to inconvenience. As he walked toand fro, however, taking in the message of her massive, floridfurniture, the immense expression of her signs and symbols, he had aslittle doubt of the inconvenience he was prepared to suffer. He foundhimself even facing the thought that he had nothing to fall back on,and that that was as great a humiliation in a good cause as a proud mancould desire. It had not yet been so distinct to him that he made noshow--literally not the smallest; so complete a show seemed made thereall about him; so almost abnormally affirmative, so aggressively erect,were the huge, heavy objects that syllabled his hostess story. "Whenall's said and done, you know, she's colossally vulgar"--he had onceall but said that of Mrs. Lowder to her niece; only just keeping itback at the last, keeping it to himself with all its danger about it.It mattered because it bore so directly, and he at all events quitefelt it a thing that Kate herself would some day bring out to him. Itbore directly at present, and really all the more that somehow,strangely, it didn't in the least imply that Aunt Maud was dull orstale. She was vulgar with freshness, almost with beauty, since therewas beauty, to a degree, in the play of so big and bold a temperament.She was in fine quite the largest possible quantity to deal with; andhe was in the cage of the lioness without his whip--the whip, in aword, of a supply of proper retorts. He had no retort but that he lovedthe girl--which in such a house as that was painfully cheap. Kate hadmentioned to him more than once that her aunt was Passionate, speakingof it as a kind of offset and uttering it as with a capital P, markingit as something that he might, that he in fact ought to, turn about insome way to their advantage. He wondered at this hour to what advantagehe could turn it; but the case grew less simple the longer he waited.Decidedly there was something he hadn't enough of. He stood as one fast.

  His slow march to and fro seemed to give him the very measure; as hepaced and paced the distance it became the desert of his poverty; atthe sight of which expanse moreover he could pretend to himself aslittle as before that the desert looked redeemable. Lancaster Gatelooked rich--that was all the effect; which it was unthinkable that anystate of his own should ever remotely resemble. He read more vividly,more critically, as has been hinted, the appearances about him; andthey did nothing so much as make him wonder at his aesthetic reaction.He hadn't known--and in spite of Kate's repeated reference to her ownrebellions of taste--that he should "mind" so much how an independentlady might decorate her house. It was the language of the house itselfthat spoke to him, writing out for him, with surpassing breadth andfreedom, the associations and conceptions, the ideals and possibilitiesof the mistress. Never, he flattered himself, had he seen anything sogregariously ugly--operatively, ominously so cruel. He was glad to havefound this last name for the whole character; "cruel" somehow playedinto the subject for an article--that his impression put straight intohis mind. He would write about the heavy horrors that could stillflourish, that lifted their undiminished heads, in an age so proud ofits short way with false gods; and it would be funny if what he shouldhave got from Mrs. Lowder were to prove, after all, but a small amountof copy. Yet the great thing, really the dark thing, was that, evenwhile he thought of the quick column he might add up, he felt it lesseasy to laugh at the heavy horrors than to quail before them. Hecouldn't describe and dismiss them collectively, call them eitherMid-Victorian or Early; not being at all sure they were rangeable underone rubric. It was only manifest they were splendid and werefurthermore conclusively British. They constituted an order and theyabounded in rare material--precious woods, metals, stuffs, stones. Hehad never dreamed of anything so fringed and scalloped, so buttoned andcorded, drawn everywhere so tight, and curled everywhere so thick. Hehad never dreamed of so much gilt and glass, so much satin and plush,so much rosewood and marble and malachite. But it was, above all, thesolid forms, the wasted finish, the misguided cost, the generalattestation of morality and money, a good conscience and a big balance.These things finally represented for him a portentous negation of hisown world of thought--of which, for that matter, in the presence ofthem, he became as for the first time hopelessly aware. They revealedit to him by their merciless difference. His interview with Aunt Maud,none the less, took by no means the turn he had expected. Passionatethough her nature, no doubt Mrs. Lowder, on this occasion, neitherthreatened nor appealed. Her arms of aggression, her weapons ofdefence, were presumably close at hand, but she left them untouched andunmentioned, and was in fact so bland that he properly perceived onlyafterwards how adroit she had been. He properly perceived somethingelse as well, which complicated his case; he shouldn't have known whatto call it if he hadn't called it her really imprudent good-nature. Herblandness, in other words, was not mere policy--he wasn't dangerousenough for policy; it was the result, he could see, of her fairlyliking him a little. From the moment she did that she herself becamemore interesting; and who knew what might happen should he take toliking _her?_ Well, it was a risk he naturally must face. She foughthim, at any rate, but with one hand, with a few loose grains of straypowder. He recognised at the end of ten minutes, and even without herexplaining it, that if she had made him wait it had not been to woundhim; they had by that time almost directly met on the fact of herintention. She had wanted him to think for himself of what she proposedto say to him--not having otherwise announced it; wanted to let it comehome to him on the spot, as she had shrewdly believed it would. Herfirst question, on appearing, had practically been as to whether hehadn't taken her hint, and this inquiry assumed so many things that itmade discussion, immediately, frank and large. He knew, with thequestion put, that the hint was just what he _had_ taken; knew that shehad made him quickly forgive her the display of her power; knew that ifhe didn't take care he should understand her, and the strength of herpurpose, to say nothing of that of her imagination, nothing of thelength of her purse, only too well. Yet he pulled himself up with thethought, too, that he was not going to be afraid of understanding her;he was just going to understand and understand without detriment to thefeeblest, even, of his passions. The play of one's mind let one in, atthe best, dreadfully, in action, in the need of action, wheresimplicity was all; but when one couldn't prevent it the thing was tomake it complete. There would never be mistakes but for the originalfun of mistakes. What he must use his fatal intelligence for was toresist. Mrs. Lowder, meanwhile, might use it for whatever she liked.

  It was after she had begun her st
atement of her own idea about Katethat he began, on his side, to reflect that--with her manner ofoffering it as really sufficient if he would take the trouble toembrace--it she couldn't half hate him. That was all, positively, sheseemed to show herself for the time as attempting; clearly, if she didher intention justice, she would have nothing more disagreeable to do."If I hadn't been ready to go very much further, you understand, Iwouldn't have gone so far. I don't care what you repeat to her--themore you repeat to her, perhaps the better; and, at any rate, there'snothing she doesn't already know. I don't say it for her; I say it foryou--when I want to reach my niece I know how to do it straight." SoAunt Maud delivered herself--as with homely benevolence, in thesimplest, but the clearest terms; virtually conveying that, though aword to the wise was, doubtless, in spite of the advantage, _not_always enough, a word to the good could never fail to be. The sense ouryoung man read into her words was that she liked him because he wasgood--was really, by her measure, good enough: good enough, that is, togive up her niece for her and go his way in peace. But _was_ he goodenough--by his own measure? He fairly wondered, while she more fullyexpressed herself, if it might be his doom to prove so. "She's thefinest possible creature--of course you flatter yourself that you knowit. But I know it, quite as well as you possibly can--by which I mean agood deal better yet; and the tune to which I'm ready to prove my faithcompares favourably enough, I think, with anything _you_ can do. Idon't say it because she's my niece--that's nothing to me: I might havehad fifty nieces, and I wouldn't have brought one of them to this placeif I hadn't found her to my taste. I don't say I wouldn't have donesomething else, but I wouldn't have put up with her presence. Kate'spresence, by good fortune, I marked early; Kate's presence--unluckilyfor _you_--is everything I could possibly wish; Kate's presence is, inshort, as fine as you know, and I've been keeping it for the comfort ofmy declining years. I've watched it long; I've been saving it up andletting it, as you say of investments, appreciate, and you may judgewhether, now it has begun to pay so, I'm likely to consent to treat forit with any but a high bidder. I can do the best with her, and I've myidea of the best."

  "Oh, I quite conceive," said Densher, "that your idea of the best isn'tme."

  It was an oddity of Mrs. Lowder's that her face in speech was like alighted window at night, but that silence immediately drew the curtain.The occasion for reply allowed by her silence was never easy to take;yet she was still less easy to interrupt. The great glaze of hersurface, at all events, gave her visitor no present help. "I didn't askyou to come to hear what it isn't--I asked you to come to hear what itis."

  "Of course," Densher laughed, "it's very great indeed."

  His hostess went on as if his contribution to the subject were barelyrelevant. "I want to see her high, high up--high up and in the light."

  "Ah, you naturally want to marry her to a duke, and are eager to smoothaway any hitch."

  She gave him so, on this, the mere effect of the drawn blind that itquite forced him, at first, into the sense, possibly just, of havingaffected her as flip pant, perhaps even as low. He had been looked atso, in blighted moments of presumptuous youth, by big cold public men,but never, so far as he could recall, by any private lady. More thananything yet it gave him the measure of his companion's subtlety, andthereby of Kate's possible career. "Don't be _too_ impossible!"--hefeared from his friend, for a moment, some such answer as that; andthen felt, as she spoke otherwise, as if she were letting him offeasily. "I want her to marry a great man." That was all; but, more andmore, it was enough; and if it hadn't been her next words would havemade it so. "And I think of her what I think. There you are."

  They sat for a little face to face upon it, and he was conscious ofsomething deeper still, of something she wished him to understand if heonly would. To that extent she did appeal--appealed to the intelligenceshe desired to show she believed him to possess. He was meanwhile, atall events, not the man wholly to fail of comprehension. "Of course I'maware how little I can answer to any fond, proud dream. You've aview--a magnificent one; into which I perfectly enter. I thoroughlyunderstand what I'm not, and I'm much obliged to you for not remindingme of it in any rougher way." She said nothing--she kept that up; itmight even have been to let him go further, if he was capable of it, inthe way of poorness of spirit. It was one of those cases in which a mancouldn't show, if he showed at all, save for poor; unless indeed hepreferred to show for asinine. It was the plain truth: he _was_--onMrs. Lowder's basis, the only one in question--a very small quantity,and he did know, damnably, what made quantities large. He desired to beperfectly simple; yet in the midst of that effort a deeper apprehensionthrobbed. Aunt Maud clearly conveyed it, though he couldn't later onhave said how. "You don't really matter, I believe, so much as youthink, and I'm not going to make you a martyr by banishing you. Yourperformances with Kate in the Park are ridiculous so far as they'remeant as consideration for me; and I had much rather see youmyself--since you're, in your way, my dear young man, delightful--andarrange with you, count with you, as I easily, as I perfectly should.Do you suppose me so stupid as to quarrel with you if it's not reallynecessary? It won't--it would be too absurd!--_be_ necessary. I canbite your head off any day, any day I really open my mouth; and I'mdealing with you now, see--and successfully judge--without opening it.I do things handsomely all round--I place you in the presence of theplan with which, from the moment it's a case of taking you seriously,you're incompatible. Come then as near it as you like, walk all roundit--don't be afraid you'll hurt it!--and live on with it before you."

  He afterwards felt that if she hadn't absolutely phrased all this itwas because she so soon made him out as going with her far enough. Hewas so pleasantly affected by her asking no promise of him, her notproposing he should pay for her indulgence by his word of honour not tointerfere, that he gave her a kind of general assurance of esteem.Immediately afterwards, then, he spoke of these things to Kate, andwhat then came back to him first of all was the way he had said toher--he mentioned it to the girl--very much as one of a pair of loverssays in a rupture by mutual consent: "I hope immensely, of course, thatyou'll always regard me as a friend." This had perhaps been goingfar--he submitted it all to Kate; but really there had been so much init that it was to be looked at, as they might say, wholly in its ownlight. Other things than those we have presented had come up before theclose of his scene with Aunt Maud, but this matter of her not treatinghim as a peril of the first order easily predominated. There wasmoreover plenty to talk about on the occasion of his subsequent passagewith our young woman, it having been put to him abruptly, the nightbefore, that he might give himself a lift and do his newspaper aservice--so flatteringly was the case expressed--by going, for fifteenor twenty weeks, to America. The idea of a series of letters from theUnited States from the strictly social point of view had for some timebeen nursed in the inner sanctuary at whose door he sat, and the momentwas now deemed happy for letting it loose. The imprisoned thought had,in a word, on the opening of the door, flown straight out intoDensher's face, or perched at least on his shoulder, making him look upin surprise from his mere inky office-table. His account of the matterto Kate was that he couldn't refuse--not being in a position, as yet,to refuse anything; but that his being chosen for such an errandconfounded his sense of proportion. He was definite as to his scarceknowing how to measure the honour, which struck him as equivocal; hehad not quite supposed himself the man for the class of job. Thisconfused consciousness, he intimated, he had promptly enough betrayedto his manager; with the effect, however, of seeing the questionsurprisingly clear up. What it came to was that the sort of twaddlethat was not in his chords was, unexpectedly, just what they happenedthis time not to want. They wanted his letters, for queer reasons,about as good as he could let them come; he was to play his own littletune and not be afraid; that was the whole point.

  It would have been the whole, that is, had there not been a sharper onestill in the circumstance that he was to start at once. His mission, asthey called it at the office, wo
uld probably be over by the end ofJune, which was desirable; but to bring that about he must now not losea week; his inquiries, he understood, were to cover the whole ground,and there were reasons of State--reasons operating at the seat ofempire in Fleet Street--why the nail should be struck on the head.Densher made no secret to Kate of his having asked for a day to decide;and his account of that matter was that he felt he owed it to her tospeak to her first. She assured him on this that nothing so much asthat scruple had yet shown her how they were bound together; she wasclearly proud of his letting a thing of such importance depend on her;but she was clearer still as to his instant duty. She rejoiced in hisprospect and urged him to his task; she should miss him intensely--ofcourse she should miss him; but she made so little of it that she spokewith jubilation of what he would see and would do. She made so much ofthis last quantity that he laughed at her innocence, though also withscarce the heart to give her the real size of his drop in the dailybucket. He was struck at the same time with her happy grasp of what hadreally occurred in Fleet Street--all the more that it was his own finalreading. He was to pull the subject up--that was just what they wanted;and it would take more than all the United States together, visit themeach as he might, to let _him_ down. It was just because he didn't noseabout and wasn't the usual gossipmonger that they had picked him out;it was a branch of their correspondence with which they evidentlywished a new tone associated, such a tone as, from now on, it wouldhave always to take from his example.

  "How you ought indeed, when you understand so well, to be ajournalist's wife!" Densher exclaimed in admiration, even while shestruck him as fairly hurrying him off.

  But she was almost impatient of the praise. "What do you expect one_not_ to understand when one cares for you?"

  "Ah then, I'll put it otherwise and say 'How much you care for me!'"

  "Yes," she assented; "it fairly redeems my stupidity. I _shall,_ with achance to show it," she added, "have some imagination for you."

  She spoke of the future this time as so little contingent, that he felta queerness of conscience in making her the report that he presentlyarrived at on what had passed for him with the real arbiter of theirdestiny. The way for that had been blocked a little by his news fromFleet Street; but in the crucible of their happy discussion thiselement soon melted into the other, and in the mixture that ensued theparts were not to be distinguished. The young man moreover, beforetaking his leave, was to see why Kate had just spoken of the future asif they now really possessed it, and was to come to the vision by adevious way that deepened the final cheer. Their faces were turned tothe illumined quarter as soon as he had answered her question inrespect to the appearance of their being able to play a waiting gamewith success. It was for the possibility of that appearance that shehad, a few days before, so earnestly pressed him to see her aunt; andif after his hour with that lady it had not struck Densher that he hadseen her to the happiest purpose the poor facts flushed with a bettermeaning as Kate, one by one, took them up.

  "If she consents to your coming, why isn't that everything?"

  "It _is_ everything; everything _she_ thinks it. It's theprobability--I mean as Mrs. Lowder measures probability--that I may beprevented from becoming a complication for her by some arrangement,_any_ arrangement, through which you shall see me often and easily.She's sure of my want of money, and that gives her time. She believesin my having a certain amount of delicacy, in my wishing to better mystate before I put the pistol to your head in respect to sharing it.The time that will take figures for her as the time that will help herif she doesn't spoil her chance by treating me badly. She doesn't atall wish moreover," Densher went on, "to treat me badly, for I believe,upon my honour, funny as it may sound to you, that she personallyrather likes me, and that if you weren't in question I might almostbecome her pet young man. She doesn't disparage intellect andculture--quite the contrary; she wants them to adorn her board and benamed in her programme; and I'm sure it has sometimes cost her a realpang that I should be so desirable, at once, and so impossible." Hepaused a moment, and his companion then saw that a strange smile was inhis face--a smile as strange even as the adjunct, in her own, of thisinforming vision. "I quite suspect her of believing that, if the truthwere known, she likes me literally better than--deep down--you yourselfdo: wherefore she does me the honour to think that I may be safely leftto kill my own cause. There, as I say, comes in her margin. I'm not thesort of stuff of romance that wears, that washes, that survives use,that resists familiarity. Once in any degree admit that, and your prideand prejudice will take care of the rest! the pride fed full,meanwhile, by the system she means to practise with you, and theprejudice excited by the comparison she'll enable you to make, fromwhich I shall come off badly. She likes me, but she'll never like me somuch as when she succeeded a little better in making me look wretched.For then _you'll_ like me less."

  Kate showed for this evocation a due interest, but no alarm; and it wasa little as if to pay his tender cynicism back in kind that she afteran instant replied: "I see, I see; what an immense affair she mustthink me! One was aware, but you deepen the impression."

  "I think you'll make no mistake," said Densher, "in letting it go asdeep as it will."

  He had given her indeed, she made no scruple of showing, plenty toconsider. "Her facing the music, her making you boldly as welcome asyou say--that's an awfully big theory, you know, and worthy of all theother big things that, in one's acquaintance with people, give her aplace so apart."

  "Oh, she's grand," the young man conceded; "she's on the scale,altogether, of the car of Juggernaut which was a kind of image thatcame to me yesterday while I waited for her at Lancaster Gate. Thethings in your drawing-room there were like the forms of the strangeidols, the mystic excrescences, with which one may suppose the front ofthe car to bristle."

  "Yes, aren't they?" the girl returned; and they had, over all thataspect of their wonderful lady, one of those deep and free interchangesthat made everything but confidence a false note for them. There werecomplications, there were questions; but they were so much moretogether than they were anything else. Kate uttered for a while no wordof refutation of Aunt Maud's "big" diplomacy, and they left it there,as they would have left any other fine product, for a monument to herpowers. But, Densher related further, he had had in other respects toothe car of Juggernaut to face; he omitted nothing from his account ofhis visit, least of all the way Aunt Maud had frankly at last--thoughindeed only under artful pressure--fallen foul of his very type, hiswant of the right marks, his foreign accidents, his queer antecedents.She had told him he was but half a Briton, which, he granted Kate,would have been dreadful if he hadn't so let himself in for it.

  "I was really curious, you see," he explained, "to find out from herwhat sort of queer creature, what sort of social anomaly, in the lightof such conventions as hers, such an education as mine makes one passfor."

  Kate said nothing for a little; but then, "Why should you care?" sheasked.

  "Oh," he laughed, "I like her so much; and then, for a man of my trade,her views, her spirit, are essentially a thing to get hold of; theybelong to the great public mind that we meet at every turn and that wemust keep setting up 'codes' with. Besides," he added, "I want toplease her personally."

  "Ah, yes, we must please her personally!" his companion echoed; and thewords may represent all their definite recognition, at the time, ofDensher's politic gain. They had in fact between this and his start forNew York many matters to handle, and the question he now touched uponcame up for Kate above all. She looked at him as if he had really toldher aunt more of his immediate personal story than he had ever toldherself. That, if it were so, was an accident, and it put him, for halfan hour, on as much of the picture of his early years abroad, hismigratory parents, his Swiss schools, his German university, as she hadeasy attention for. A man, he intimated, a man of their world, wouldhave spotted him straight as to many of these points; a man of theirworld, so far as they had a world, would have been through the Englishmi
ll. But it was none the less charming to make his confession to awoman; women had, in fact, for such differences, so much moreimagination. Kate showed at present all his case could require; whenshe had had it from beginning to end she declared that she now made outmore than ever yet of what she loved him for. She had herself, as achild, lived with some continuity in the world across the Channel,coming home again still a child; and had participated after that, inher teens, in her mother's brief but repeated retreats to Dresden, toFlorence, to Biarritz, weak and expensive attempts at economy fromwhich there stuck to her--though in general coldly expressed, throughthe instinctive avoidance of cheap raptures--the religion of foreignthings. When it was revealed to her how many more foreign things werein Merton Densher than he had hitherto taken the trouble to catalogue,she almost faced him as if he were a map of the continent or a handsomepresent of a delightful new "Murray." He hadn't meant to swagger, hehad rather meant to plead, though with Mrs. Lowder he had meant also alittle to explain. His father had been, in strange countries, in twentysettlements of the English, British chaplain, resident or occasional,and had had for years the unusual luck of never wanting a billet. Hiscareer abroad had therefore been unbroken, and, as his stipend hadnever been great, he had educated his children at the smallest cost, inthe schools nearest; which was also a saving of railway fares.Densher's mother, it further appeared, had practised on her side adistinguished industry, to the success of which--so far as success evercrowned it--this period of exile had much contributed: she copied,patient lady, famous pictures in great museums, having begun with ahappy natural gift and taking in betimes the scale of her opportunity.Copyists abroad of course swarmed, but Mrs. Densher had had a sense anda hand of her own, had arrived at a perfection that persuaded, thateven deceived, and that made the disposal of her work blissfully usual.Her son, who had lost her, held her image sacred, and the effect of histelling Kate all about her, as well as about other matters until thenmixed and dim, was to render his history rich, his sources full, hisoutline anything but common. He had come round, he had come back, heinsisted abundantly, to being a Briton: his Cambridge years, his happyconnection, as it had proved, with his father's college, amplycertified to that, to say nothing of his subsequent plunge into London,which filled up the measure. But brave enough though his descent toEnglish earth, he had passed, by the way, through zones of air that hadleft their ruffle on his wings, had been exposed to initiationsineffaceable. Something had happened to him that could never be undone.

  When Kate Croy said to him as much he besought her not to insist,declaring that this indeed was what was too much the matter with him,that he had been but too probably spoiled for native, for insular use.On which, not unnaturally, she insisted the more, assuring him, withoutmitigation, that if he was complicated and brilliant she wouldn't forthe world have had him any thing less; so that he was reduced in theend to accusing her of putting the dreadful truth to him in the hollowguise of flattery. She was making out how abnormal he was in order thatshe might eventually find him impossible; and, as she could fully makeit out but with his aid, she had to bribe him by feigned delight tohelp her. If her last word for him, in the connection, was that the wayhe saw himself was just a precious proof the more of his having tastedof the tree and being thereby prepared to assist her to eat, this givesthe happy tone of their whole talk, the measure of the flight of timein the near presence of his settled departure. Kate showed, however,that she was to be more literally taken when she spoke of the reliefAunt Maud would draw from the prospect of his absence.

  "Yet one can scarcely see why," he replied, "when she fears me solittle."

  His friend weighed his objection. "Your idea is that she likes you somuch that she'll even go so far as to regret losing you?"

  Well, he saw it in their constant comprehensive way. "Since what shebuilds on is the gradual process of your alienation, she may take theview that the process constantly requires me. Mustn't I be there tokeep it going? It's in my exile that it may languish."

  He went on with that fantasy, but at this point Kate ceased to attend.He saw after a little that she had been following some thought of herown, and he had been feeling the growth of something determinant eventhrough the extravagance of much of the pleasantry, the warm,transparent irony, into which their livelier intimacy kept plunginglike a confident swimmer. Suddenly she said to him with extraordinarybeauty: "I engage myself to you for ever."

  The beauty was in everything, and he could have separatednothing--couldn't have thought of her face as distinct from the wholejoy. Yet her face had a new light. "And I pledge you--I call God towitness!--every spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life."That was all, for the moment, but it was enough, and it was almost asquiet as if it were nothing. They were in the open air, in an alley ofthe Gardens; the great space, which seemed to arch just then higher andspread wider for them, threw them back into deep concentration. Theymoved by a common instinct to a spot, within sight, that struck them asfairly sequestered, and there, before their time together was spent,they had extorted from concentration every advance it could make them.They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact,solemnized, so far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lightedeyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement to belong only, andto belong tremendously, to each other. They were to leave the placeaccordingly an affianced couple; but before they left it other thingsstill had passed. Densher had declared his horror of bringing to apremature end her happy relation with her aunt; and they had workedround together to a high level of wisdom and patience. Kate's freeprofession was that she wished not to deprive _him_ of Mrs. Lowder'scountenance, which, in the long run, she was convinced he wouldcontinue to enjoy; and as, by a blessed turn, Aunt Maud had demanded ofhim no promise that would tie his hands, they should be able tocultivate their destiny in their own way and yet remain loyal. Onedifficulty alone stood out, which Densher named.

  "Of course it will never do--we must remember that--from the moment youallow her to found hopes of you for any one else in particular. So longas her view is content to remain as general as at present appears, Idon't see that we deceive her. At a given moment, you see, she must beundeceived: the only thing therefore is to be ready for the moment andto face it. Only, after all, in that case," the young man observed,"one doesn't quite make out what we shall have got from her."

  "What she'll have got from _us?"_ Kate inquired with a smile. "Whatshe'll have got from us," the girl went on, "is her own affair--it'sfor _her_ to measure. I asked her for nothing," she added; "I never putmyself upon her. She must take her risks, and she surely understandsthem. What we shall have got from her is what we've already spoken of,"Kate further explained; "it's that we shall have gained time. And so,for that matter, will she."

  Densher gazed a little at all this clearness; his gaze was not at thepresent hour into romantic obscurity. "Yes; no doubt, in our particularsituation, time's everything. And then there's the joy of it."

  She hesitated. "Of our secret?"

  "Not so much perhaps of our secret in itself, but of what's representedand, as we must somehow feel, protected and made deeper and closer byit." And his fine face, relaxed into happiness, covered her with allhis meaning. "Our being as we are."

  It was as if for a moment she let the meaning sink into her. "So gone?"

  "So gone. So extremely gone. However," he smiled, "we shall go a gooddeal further." Her answer to which was only the softness of hersilence--a silence that looked out for them both at the far reach oftheir prospect. This was immense, and they thus took final possessionof it. They were practically united and they were splendidly strong;but there were other things--things they were precisely strong enoughto be able successfully to count with and safely to allow for; inconsequence of which they would, for the present, subject to somebetter reason, keep their understanding to themselves. It was notindeed, however, till after one more observation of Densher's that theyfelt the question completely straightened out. "The only thing ofcourse is that
she may any day absolutely put it to you."

  Kate considered. "Ask me where, on my honour, we are? She may,naturally; but I doubt if in fact she will. While you're away she'llmake the most of it. She'll leave me alone."

  "But there'll be my letters."

  The girl faced his letters. "Very, very many?"

  "Very, very, very many--more than ever; and you know what that is! Andthen," Densher added, "there'll be yours."

  "Oh, I shan't leave mine on the hall-table. I shall post them myself."

  He looked at her a moment. "Do you think then I had best address youelsewhere?" After which, before she could quite answer, he added withsome emphasis: "I'd rather not, you know. It's straighter."

  She might again have just waited. "Of course it's straighter. Don't beafraid I shan't be straight. Address me," she continued, "where youlike. I shall be proud enough of its being known you write to me."

  He turned it over for the last clearness. "Even at the risk of itsreally bringing down the inquisition?"

  Well, the last clearness now filled her. "I'm not afraid of theinquisition. If she asks if there's anything definite between us, Iknow perfectly what I shall say."

  "That I _am,_ of course, 'gone' for you?"

  "That I love you as I shall never in my life love any one else, andthat she can make what she likes of that." She said it out sosplendidly that it was like a new profession of faith, the fulness of atide breaking through; and the effect of that, in turn, was to make hercompanion meet her with such eyes that she had time again before hecould otherwise speak. "Besides, she's just as likely to ask _you."_

  "Not while I'm away."

  "Then when you come back."

  "Well then," said Densher, "we shall have had our particular joy. Butwhat I feel is," he candidly added, "that, by an idea of her own, hersuperior policy, she _won't_ ask me. She'll let me off. I shan't haveto lie to her."

  "It will be left all to me?" asked Kate.

  "All to you!" he tenderly laughed.

  But it was, oddly, the very next moment as if he had perhaps been ashade too candid. His discrimination seemed to mark a possible, anatural reality, a reality not wholly disallowed by the account thegirl had just given of her own intention. There _was_ a difference inthe air--even if none other than the supposedly usual difference intruth between man and woman; and it was almost as if the sense of thisprovoked her. She seemed to cast about an instant, and then she wentback a little resentfully to something she had suffered to pass aminute before. She appeared to take up rather more seriously than sheneed the joke about her freedom to deceive. Yet she did this too in abeautiful way. "Men are too stupid--even you. You didn't understandjust now why, if I post my letters myself, it won't be for any thing sovulgar as to hide them."

  "Oh, you said--for the pleasure."

  "Yes; but you didn't, you don't understand what the pleasure may be.There are refinements----!" she more patiently dropped. "I mean ofconsciousness, of sensation, of appreciation," she went on. "No," shesadly insisted--_"men_ don't know. They know, in such matters, almostnothing but what women show them."

  This was one of the speeches, frequent in her, that, liberally,joyfully, intensely adopted and, in itself, as might be, embraced, drewhim again as close to her, and held him as long, as their conditionspermitted. "Then that's exactly why we've such an abysmal need of you!"