BOOK FOURTH
VII
It had all gone so fast after this that Milly uttered but the truthnearest to hand in saying to the gentleman on her right--who was, bythe same token, the gentleman on her hostess's left--that she scarceeven then knew where she was: the words marking her first full sense ofa situation really romantic. They were already dining, she and herfriend, at Lancaster Gate, and surrounded, as it seemed to her, withevery English accessory; though her consciousness of Mrs. Lowder'sexistence, and still more of her remarkable identity, had been of sorecent and so sudden a birth. Susie, as she was apt to call hercompanion for a lighter change, had only had to wave a neat little wandfor the fairy-tale to begin at once; in consequence of which Susie nowglittered--for, with Mrs. Stringham's new sense of success, it came tothat--in the character of a fairy godmother. Milly had almost insistedon dressing her, for the present occasion, as one; and it was no faultof the girl's if the good lady had not now appeared in a peaked hat, ashort petticoat and diamond shoe-buckles, brandishing the magic crutch.The good lady, in truth, bore herself not less contentedly than ifthese insignia had marked her work; and Milly's observation to LordMark had just been, doubtless, the result of such a light exchange oflooks with her as even the great length of the table had not baffled.There were twenty persons between them, but this sustained passage wasthe sharpest sequel yet to that other comparison of views during thepause on the Swiss pass. It almost appeared to Milly that their fortunehad been unduly precipitated--as if, properly, they were in theposition of having ventured on a small joke and found the answer out ofproportion grave. She could not at this moment, for instance, have saidwhether, with her quickened perceptions, she were more enlivened oroppressed; and the case might in fact have been serious had she not, bygood fortune, from the moment the picture loomed, quickly made up hermind that what finally most concerned her was neither to seek nor toshirk, was not even to wonder too much, but was to let things come asthey would, since there was little enough doubt of how they would go.
Lord Mark had been brought to her before dinner--not by Mrs. Lowder,but by the handsome girl, that lady's niece, who was now at the otherend and on the same side as Susie; he had taken her in, and she meantpresently to ask him about Miss Croy, the handsome girl, actuallyoffered to her sight--though now in a splendid way--but for the secondtime. The first time had been the occasion--only three days before--ofher calling at their hotel with her aunt and then making, for our othertwo heroines, a great impression of beauty and eminence. Thisimpression had remained so with Milly that, at present, and althoughher attention was aware at the same time of everything else, her eyeswere mainly engaged with Kate Croy when not engaged with Susie. Thatwonderful creature's eyes moreover readily met them--she ranked now asa wonderful creature; and it seemed a part of the swift prosperity ofthe American visitors that, so little in the original reckoning, sheshould yet appear conscious, charmingly, frankly conscious, ofpossibilities of friendship for them. Milly had easily and, as a guest,gracefully generalised: English girls had a special, strong beauty, andit particularly showed in evening dress--above all when, as wasstrikingly the case with this one, the dress itself was what it shouldbe. That observation she had all ready for Lord Mark when they should,after a little, get round to it. She seemed even now to see that theremight be a good deal they would get round to; the indication beingthat, taken up once for all with her other neighbour, their hostesswould leave them much to themselves. Mrs. Lowder's other neighbour wasthe Bishop of Murrum--a real bishop, such as Milly had never seen, witha complicated costume, a voice like an old-fashioned wind instrument,and a face all the portrait of a prelate; while the gentleman on ouryoung lady's left, a gentleman thick-necked, large and literal, wholooked straight before him and as if he were not to be diverted by vainwords from that pursuit, clearly counted as an offset to the possessionof Lord Mark. As Milly made out these things--with a shade ofexhilaration at the way she already fell in--she saw how she wasjustified of her plea for people and her love of life. It wasn't then,as the prospect seemed to show, so difficult to get into the current,or to stand, at any rate, on the bank. It was easy to get near--if they_were_ near; and yet the elements were different enough from any of herold elements, and positively rich and strange.
She asked herself if her right-hand neighbour would understand what shemeant by such a description of them, should she throw it off; butanother of the things to which, precisely, her sense was awakened wasthat no, decidedly, he wouldn't. It was nevertheless by this time opento her that his line would be to be clever; and indeed, evidently, nolittle of the interest was going to be in the fresh reference and fresheffect both of people's cleverness and of their simplicity. Shethrilled, she consciously flushed, and turned pale with thecertitude--it had never been so present--that she should find herselfcompletely involved: the very air of the place, the pitch of theoccasion, had for her so positive a taste and so deep an undertone. Thesmallest things, the faces, the hands, the jewels of the women, thesound of words, especially of names, across the table, the shape of theforks, the arrangement of the flowers, the attitude of the servants,the walls of the room, were all touches in a picture and denotements ina play; and they marked for her, moreover, her alertness of vision. Shehad never, she might well believe, been in such a state of vibrationher sensibility was almost too sharp for her comfort: there were, forexample, more indications than she could reduce to order in the mannerof the friendly niece, who struck her as distinguished and interesting,as in fact surprisingly genial. This young woman's type had, visibly,other possibilities; yet here, of its own free movement, it had alreadysketched a relation. Were they, Miss Croy and she, to take up the talewhere their two elders had left it off so many years before?--were theyto find they liked each other and to try for themselves if a scheme ofconstancy on more modern lines could be worked? She had doubted, asthey came to England, of Maud Manningham, had believed her a brokenreed and a vague resource, had seen their dependence on her as a stateof mind that would have been shamefully silly--so far as it _was_dependence--had they wished to do any thing so inane as "get intosociety." To have made their pilgrimage all for the sake of suchsociety as Mrs. Lowder might have in reserve for them--that didn't bearthinking of at all, and she herself had quite chosen her course forcuriosity about other matters. She would have described this curiosityas a desire to see the places she had read about, and _that_description of her motive she was prepared to give her neighbour--eventhough, as a consequence of it, he should find how little she had read.It was almost at present as if her poor prevision had been rebuked bythe majesty--she could scarcely call it less--of the event, or at allevents by the commanding character of the two figures--she couldscarcely call _that_ less either--mainly presented. Mrs. Lowder and herniece, however dissimilar, had at least in common that each was a greatreality. That was true, primarily, of the aunt--so true that Millywondered how her own companion had arrived, in other days, at so odd analliance; yet she none the less felt Mrs. Lowder as a person of whomthe mind might in two or three days roughly make the circuit. She wouldsit there massive, at least, while one attempted it; whereas Miss Croy,the handsome girl, would indulge in incalculable movements that mightinterfere with one's tour. She was real, none the less, and everythingand everybody were real; and it served them right, no doubt, the pairof them, for having rushed into their adventure.
Lord Mark's intelligence meanwhile, however, had met her own quitesufficiently to enable him to tell her how little he could clear up hersituation. He explained, for that matter--or at least he hinted--thatthere was no such thing, to-day in London, as saying where any one was.Every one was everywhere--nobody was anywhere. He should be put toit--yes, frankly--to give a name of any sort or kind to their hostess's"set." _Was_ it a set at all, or wasn't it, and were there not reallyno such things as sets, in the place, any more?--was there any thingbut the senseless shifting tumble, like that of some great greasy seain mid-Channel, of an overwhelming melted mixture? He threw out thequestion
, which seemed large; Milly felt that at the end of fiveminutes he had thrown out a great many, though he followed none morethan a step or two; perhaps he would prove suggestive, but he helpedher as yet to no discriminations: he spoke as if he had given them upfrom too much knowledge. He was thus at the opposite extreme fromherself, but, as a consequence of it, also wandering and lost; and hewas furthermore, for all his temporary incoherence, to which sheguessed there would be some key, as great a reality as either Mrs.Lowder or Kate. The only light in which he placed the former of theseladies was that of an extraordinary woman--a most extraordinary woman,and "the more extraordinary the more one knows her," while of thelatter he said nothing, for the moment, but that she was tremendously,yes, quite tremendously, good-looking. It was some time, she thought,before his talk showed his cleverness, and yet each minute she believedin it more, quite apart from what her hostess had told her on firstnaming him. Perhaps he was one of the cases she had heard of athome--those characteristic cases of people in England who concealedtheir play of mind so much more than they showed it. Even Mr. Densher alittle did that. And what made Lord Mark, at any rate, so real either,when this was a thing he so definitely insisted on? His type some how,as by a life, a need, an intention of its own, insisted _for_ him; butthat was all. It was difficult to guess his age--whether he were ayoung man who looked old or an old man who looked young; it seemed toprove nothing, as against other things, that he was bald and, as mighthave been said, slightly stale, or, more delicately perhaps, dry: therewas such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in him, and his eyes,at moments--though it was an appearance they could suddenly lose--wereas candid and clear as those of a pleasant boy. Very neat, very light,and so fair that there was little other indication of his moustachethan his constantly feeling it--which was again boyish--he would haveaffected her as the most intellectual person present if he had notaffected her as the most frivolous. The latter quality was rather inhis look than in anything else, though he constantly wore his doubleeyeglass, which was, much more, Bostonian and thoughtful.
The idea of his frivolity had, no doubt, to do with his personaldesignation, which represented--as yet, for our young woman, a littleconfusedly--a connection with an historic patriciate, a class that, inturn, also confusedly, represented an affinity with a social elementthat she had never heard otherwise described than as "fashion." Thesupreme social element in New York had never known itself but asreduced to that category, and though Milly was aware that, as appliedto a territorial and political aristocracy, the label was probably toosimple, she had for the time none other at hand. She presently, it istrue, enriched her idea with the perception that her interlocutor wasindifferent; yet this, indifferent as aristocracies notoriously were,saw her but little further, inasmuch as she felt that, in the firstplace, he would much rather get on with her than not, and in the secondwas only thinking of too many matters of his own. If he kept her inview on the one hand and kept so much else on the other--the way hecrumbed up his bread was a proof--why did he hover before her as apotentially insolent noble? She couldn't have answered the question,and it was precisely one of those that swarmed. They were complicated,she might fairly have said, by his visibly knowing, having known fromafar off, that she was a stranger and an American, and by his none theless making no more of it than if she and her like were the chief ofhis diet. He took her, kindly enough, but imperturbably, irreclaimably,for granted, and it wouldn't in the least help that she herself knewhim, as quickly, for having been in her country and threshed it out.There would be nothing for her to explain or attenuate or brag about;she could neither escape nor prevail by her strangeness; he would have,for that matter, on such a subject, more to tell her than to learn fromher. She might learn from _him_ why she was so different from thehandsome girl--which she didn't know, being merely able to feel it; orat any rate might learn from him why the handsome girl was so differentfrom her.
On these lines, however, they would move later; the lines immediatelylaid down were, in spite of his vagueness for his own convenience,definite enough. She was already, he observed to her, thinking what sheshould say on her other side--which was what Americans were alwaysdoing. She needn't in conscience say anything at all; but Americansnever knew that, nor ever, poor creatures, yes (_she_ had interposedthe "poor creatures!") what not to do. The burdens they took on--thethings, positively, they made an affair of! This easy and, after all,friendly jibe at her race was really for her, on her new friend's part,the note of personal recognition so far as she required it; and shegave him a prompt and conscious example of morbid anxiety by insistingthat her desire to be, herself, "lovely" all round was justly foundedon the lovely way Mrs. Lowder had met her. He was directly interestedin that, and it was not till afterwards that she fully knew how muchmore information about their friend he had taken than given. Hereagain, for instance, was a pertinent note for her: she had, on thespot, with her first plunge into the obscure depths of a societyconstituted from far back, encountered the interesting phenomenon ofcomplicated, of possibly sinister motive. However, Maud Manningham (hername, even in her presence, somehow still fed the fancy) _had,_ all thesame, been lovely, and one was going to meet her now quite as far on asone had one's self been met. She had been with them at theirhotel--they were a pair--before even they had supposed she could havegot their letter. Of course indeed they had written in advance, butthey had followed that up very fast. She had thus engaged them to dinebut two days later, and on the morrow again, without waiting for areturn visit, waiting for anything, she had called with her niece. Itwas as if she really cared for them, and it was magnificentfidelity--fidelity to Mrs. Stringham, her own companion and Mrs.Lowder's former schoolmate, the lady with the charming face and therather high dress down there at the end.
Lord Mark took in through his nippers these balanced attributes ofSusie. "But isn't Mrs. Stringham's fidelity then equally magnificent?"
"Well, it's a beautiful sentiment; but it isn't as if she had anythingto _give."_
"Hasn't she got you?" Lord Mark presently asked.
"Me--to give Mrs. Lowder?" Milly had clearly not yet seen herself inthe light of such an offering. "Oh, I'm rather a poor present; and Idon't feel as if, even at that, I've as yet quite been given."
"You've been shown, and if our friend has jumped at you it comes to thesame thing." He made his jokes, Lord Mark, without amusement forhimself; yet it wasn't that he was grim. "To be seen you mustrecognise, _is,_ for you, to be jumped at; and, if it's a question ofbeing shown, here you are again. Only it has now been taken out of yourfriend's hands; it's Mrs. Lowder, already, who's getting the benefit.Look round the table and you'll make out, I think, that you're being,from top to bottom, jumped at."
"Well, then," said Milly, "I seem also to feel that I like it betterthan being made fun of."
It was one of the things she afterwards saw--Milly was for ever seeingthings afterwards--that her companion had here had some way of his own,quite unlike any one's else, of assuring her of his consideration. Shewondered how he had done it, for he had neither apologised norprotested. She said to herself, at any rate, that he had led her onand what was most odd was the question by which he had done so. "Doesshe know much about you?"
"No, she just likes us."
Even for this his travelled lordship, seasoned and saturated, had nolaugh. "I mean _you_ particularly. Has that lady with the charmingface, which _is_ charming, told her?"
Milly hesitated. "Told her what?"
"Everything."
This, with the way he dropped it, again considerably moved her--madeher feel for a moment that, as a matter of course, she was a subjectfor disclosures. But she quickly found her answer. "Oh, as for that,you must ask _her."_
"Your clever companion?"
"Mrs. Lowder."
He replied to this that their hostess was a person with whom there werecertain liberties one never took, but that he was none the less fairlyupheld, inasmuch as she was for the most part kind to him and as,should he be very good for a
while, she would probably herself tellhim. "And I shall have, at any rate, in the meantime, the interest ofseeing what she does with you. That will teach me more or less, yousee, how much she knows."
Milly followed this--it was lucid; but it suggested something apart."How much does she know about _you?"_
"Nothing," said Lord Mark serenely. "But that doesn't matter--for whatshe does with me." And then, as to anticipate Milly's question aboutthe nature of such doing: "This, for instance--turning me straight onfor _you."_
The girl thought. "And you mean she wouldn't if she did know----?"
He met it as if it were really a point. "No. I believe, to do herjustice, she still would. So you can be easy."
Milly had the next instant, then, acted on the permission. "Becauseyou're even at the worst the best thing she has?"
With this he was at last amused. "I was till you came. You're the bestnow."
It was strange his words should have given her the sense of hisknowing, but it was positive that they did so, and to the extent ofmaking her believe them, though still with wonder. That, really, fromthis first of their meetings, was what was most to abide with her: sheaccepted almost helplessly, she surrendered to the inevitability ofbeing the sort of thing, as he might have said, that he at leastthoroughly believed he had, in going about, seen here enough of for allpractical purposes. Her submission was naturally, moreover, not to beimpaired by her learning later on that he had paid at short intervals,though at a time apparently just previous to her own emergence from theobscurity of extreme youth, three separate visits to New York, wherehis nameable friends and his contrasted contacts had been numerous. Hisimpression, his recollection of the whole mixed quantity, was stillvisibly rich. It had helped him to place her, and she was more and moresharply conscious of having--as with the door sharply slammed upon herand the guard's hand raised in signal to the train--been popped intothe compartment in which she was to travel for him. It was a use of herthat many a girl would have been doubtless quick to resent; and thekind of mind that thus, in our young lady, made all for mere seeing andtaking is precisely one of the charms of our subject. Milly hadpractically just learned from him, had made out, as it were, from herrumbling compartment, that he gave her the highest place among theirfriend's actual properties. She was a success, that was what it cameto, he presently assured her, and that was what it was to be a success:it always happened before one could know it. One's ignorance was infact often the greatest part of it. "You haven't had time yet," hesaid; "this is nothing. But you'll see. You'll see everything. You can,you know--everything you dream of."
He made her more and more wonder; she almost felt as if he were showingher visions while he spoke; and strangely enough, though it was visionsthat had drawn her on, she hadn't seen them in connection--that is insuch preliminary and necessary connection--with such a face as LordMark's, such eyes and such a voice, such a tone and such a manner. Hehad for an instant the effect of making her ask herself if she wereafter all going to be afraid; so distinct was it for fifty seconds thata fear passed over her. There they were again--yes, certainly: Susie'soverture to Mrs. Lowder had been their joke, but they had pressed inthat gaiety an electric bell that continued to sound. Positively, whileshe sat there, she had the loud rattle in her ears, and she wondered,during these moments, why the others didn't hear it. They didn't stare,they didn't smile, and the fear in her that I speak of was but her owndesire to stop it. That dropped, however, as if the alarm itself hadceased; she seemed to have seen in a quick, though tempered glare thatthere were two courses for her, one to leave London again the firstthing in the morning, the other to do nothing at all. Well, she woulddo nothing at all; she was already doing it; more than that, she hadalready done it, and her chance was gone. She gave herself up--she hadthe strangest sense, on the spot, of so deciding; for she had turned acorner before she went on again with Lord Mark. Inexpressive, butintensely significant, he met as no one else could have done the veryquestion she had suddenly put to Mrs. Stringham on the Bruenig. Shouldshe have it, whatever she did have, that question had been, for long?"Ah, so possibly not," her neighbour appeared to reply; "therefore,don't you see? _I'm_ the way." It was vivid that he might be, in spiteof his absence of flourish; the way being doubtless just _in_ thatabsence. The handsome girl, whom she didn't lose sight of and who, shefelt, kept her also in view--Mrs. Lowder's striking niece would,perhaps, be the way as well, for in her too was the absence offlourish, though she had little else, so far as one could tell, incommon with Lord Mark. Yet how indeed _could_ one tell, what did oneunderstand, and of what was one, for that matter, provisionallyconscious but of their being somehow together in what they represented?Kate Croy, fine but friendly, looked over at her as really with a guessat Lord Mark's effect on her. If she could guess this effect what thendid she know about it and in what degree had she felt it herself? Didthat represent, as between them, anything particular, and should shehave to count with them as duplicating, as intensifying by a mutualintelligence, the relation into which she was sinking? Nothing was soodd as that she should have to recognise so quickly in each of theseglimpses of an instant the various signs of a relation and thisanomaly itself, had she had more time to give to it, might well, mightalmost terribly have suggested to her that her doom was to live fast.It was queerly a question of the short run and the consciousnessproportionately crowded.
These were immense excursions for the spirit of a young person at Mrs.Lowder's mere dinner-party; but what was so significant and soadmonitory as the fact of their being possible? What could they havebeen but just a part, already, of the crowded consciousness? And it wasjust a part, likewise, that while plates were changed and dishespresented and periods in the banquet marked; while appearances insistedand phenomena multiplied and words reached her from here and there likeplashes of a slow, thick tide; while Mrs. Lowder grew somehow morestout and more instituted and Susie, at her distance and in comparison,more thinly improvised and more different--different, that is, fromevery one and everything: it was just a part that while this processwent forward our young lady alighted, came back, taking up her destinyagain as if she had been able by a wave or two of her wings to placeherself briefly in sight of an alternative to it. Whatever it was ithad showed in this brief interval as better than the alternative; andit now presented itself altogether in the image and in the place inwhich she had left it. The image was that of her being, as Lord Markhad declared, a success. This depended more or less of course on hisidea of the thing--into which at present, however, she wouldn't go.But, renewing soon, she had asked him what he meant then that Mrs.Lowder would do with her, and he had replied that this might safely beleft. "She'll get back," he pleasantly said, "her money." He could sayit too--which was singular--without affecting her either as vulgar oras "nasty "; and he had soon explained himself by adding: "Nobody here,you know, does anything for nothing."
"Ah, if you mean that we shall reward her as hard as ever we can,nothing is more certain. But she's an idealist," Milly continued, "andidealists, in the long run, I think, _don't_ feel that they lose."
Lord Mark seemed, within the limits of his enthusiasm, to find thischarming. "Ah, she strikes you as an idealist?"
"She idealises _us,_ my friend and me, absolutely. She sees us in alight," said Milly. "That's all I've got to hold on by. So don'tdeprive me of it."
"I wouldn't for the world. But do you think," he continued as if itwere suddenly important for him--"do you think she sees _me_ in alight?"
She neglected his question for a little, partly because her attentionattached itself more and more to the handsome girl, partly because,placed so near their hostess, she wished not to show as discussing hertoo freely. Mrs. Lowder, it was true, steering in the other quarter acourse in which she called at subjects as if they were islets in anarchipelago, continued to allow them their ease, and Kate Croy, at thesame time, steadily revealed herself as interesting. Milly in factfound, of a sudden, her ease--found it all--as she bethought herselfthat what Mrs. Lowder w
as really arranging for was a report on herquality and, as perhaps might be said, her value from Lord Mark. Shewished him, the wonderful lady, to have no pretext for not knowing whathe thought of Miss Theale. Why his judgment so mattered remained to beseen; but it was this divination, in any case, that now determinedMilly's rejoinder. "No. She knows you. She has probably reason to. Andyou all, here, know each other--I see that--so far as you knowanything. You know what you're used to, and it's your being used toit--that, and that only--that makes you. But there are things you don'tknow."
He took it in as if it might fairly, to do him justice, be a point."Things that _I_ don't--with all the pains I take and the way I've runabout the world to leave nothing unlearned?"
Milly thought, and it was perhaps the very truth of his claim--its notbeing negligible--that sharpened her impatience and thereby her wit."You're _blase,_ but you're not enlightened. You're familiar witheverything, but conscious, really of nothing. What I mean is thatyou've no imagination."
Lord Mark, at this, threw back his head, ranging with his eyes theopposite side of the room and showing himself at last so much morecompletely as diverted that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice.Mrs. Lowder, however, only smiled on Milly for a sign that somethingracy was what she had expected, and resumed, with a splash of herscrew, her cruise among the islands. "Oh, I've heard that," the youngman replied, "before!"
"There it is then. You've heard everything before. You've heard _me_ ofcourse before, in my country, often enough."
"Oh, never too often," he protested; "I'm sure I hope I shall stillhear you again and again."
"But what good then has it done you?" the girl went on as if nowfrankly to amuse him.
"Oh, you'll see when you know me."
"But, most assuredly, I shall never know you."
"Then that will be exactly," he laughed, "the good!"
If it established thus that they couldn't, or Wouldn't, mix, why, nonethe less, did Milly feel, through it, a perverse quickening of therelation to which she had been, in spite of herself, appointed?
What queerer consequence of their not mixing than their talking--for itwas what they had arrived at--almost intimately? She wished to get awayfrom him, or indeed, much rather, away from herself so far as she waspresent to him. She saw already--wonderful creature, after all, herselftoo--that there would be a good deal more of him to come for her, andthat the special sign of their intercourse would be to keep herself outof the question. Everything else might come in--only never that; andwith such an arrangement they might even go far. This in fact mightquite have begun, on the spot, with her returning again to the topic ofthe handsome girl. If she was to keep herself out she could naturallybest do so by putting in somebody else. She accordingly put in KateCroy, being ready to that extent--as she was not at all afraid forher--to sacrifice her if necessary. Lord Mark himself, for that matter,had made it easy by saying a little while before that no one among themdid anything for nothing. "What then"--she was aware of beingabrupt--"does Miss Croy, if she's so interested, do it for? What hasshe to gain by _her_ lovely welcome? Look at her _now!"_ Milly brokeout with characteristic freedom of praise, though pulling herself upalso with a compunctious "Oh!" as the direction thus given to theireyes happened to coincide with a turn of Kate's face to them. All shehad meant to do was to insist that this face was fine; but what she hadin fact done was to renew again her effect of showing herself to itspossessor as conjoined with Lord Mark for some interested view of it.He had, however, promptly met her question.
"To gain? Why, your acquaintance."
"Well, what's my acquaintance to her? She can care for me--she mustfeel that--only by being sorry for me; and that's why she's lovely: tobe already willing to take the trouble to be. It's the height of thedisinterested."
There were more things in this than one that Lord Mark might have takenup; but in a minute he had made his choice. "Ah then, I'm nowhere, forI'm afraid _I'm_ not sorry for you in the least. What do you makethen," he asked, "of your success?"
"Why, just the great reason of all. It's just because our friend theresees it that she pities me. She understands," Milly said; "she's betterthan any of you. She's beautiful."
He appeared struck with this at last--with the point the girl made ofit; to which she came back even after a diversion created by a dishpresented between them. "Beautiful in character, I see. _Is_ she so?You must tell me about her."
Milly wondered. "But haven't you known her longer than I? Haven't youseen her for yourself?"
"No--I've failed with her. It's no use. I don't make her out. And Iassure you I really should like to." His assurance had in fact for hiscompanion a positive suggestion of sincerity; he affected her as nowsaying something that he felt; and she was the more struck with it asshe was still conscious of the failure even of curiosity he had justshown in respect to herself. She had meant something--though indeed forherself almost only--in speaking of their friend's natural pity; it hadbeen a note, doubtless, of questionable taste, but it had quavered outin spite of her; and he had not so much as cared to inquire "Why'natural'?" Not that it wasn't really much better for her that heshouldn't: explanations would in truth have taken her much too far.Only she now perceived that, in comparison, her word about this otherperson really "drew" him; and there were things in that, probably, manythings, as to which she would learn more and which glimmered therealready as part and parcel of that larger "real" with which, in her newsituation, she was to be beguiled. It was in fact at the very moment,this element, not absent from what Lord Mark was further saying. "Soyou're wrong, you see, as to our knowing all about each other. Thereare cases where we break down. I at any rate give _her_ up--up, thatis, to you. You must do her for me--tell me, I mean, when you knowmore. You'll notice," he pleasantly wound up, "that I've confidence inyou."
"Why shouldn't you have?" Milly asked, observing in this, as shethought, a fine, though, for such a man, a surprisingly artless,fatuity. It was as if there might have been a question of herfalsifying for the sake of her own show--that is of her honesty notbeing proof against her desire to keep well with him herself. Shedidn't, none the less, otherwise protest against his remark; there wassomething else she was occupied in seeing. It was the handsome girlalone, one of his own species and his own society, who had made himfeel uncertain; of his certainties about a mere little American, acheap exotic, imported almost wholesale, and whose habitat, with itsconditions of climate, growth, and cultivation, its immense profusion,but its few varieties and thin development, he was perfectly satisfied.The marvel was, too, that Milly understood his satisfaction--feelingthat she expressed the truth in presently saying: "Of course; I makeout that she must be difficult; just as I see that I myself must beeasy." And that was what, for all the rest of this occasion, remainedwith her--as the most interesting thing that could remain. She was moreand more content herself to be easy; she would have been resigned, evenhad it been brought straighter home to her, to passing for a cheapexotic. Provisionally, at any rate, that protected her wish to keepherself, with Lord Mark, in abeyance. They _had_ all affected her asinevitably knowing each other, and if the handsome girl's place amongthem was something even their initiation couldn't deal with--why, then,she would indeed be a quantity.
VIII
That sense of quantities, separate or mixed, was indeed doubtless whatmost prevailed at first for our slightly gasping American pair; itfound utterance for them in their frequent remark to each other thatthey had no one but themselves to thank. It dropped from Milly morethan once that if she had ever known it was so easy--! though herexclamation mostly ended without completing her idea. This, however,was a trifle to Mrs. Stringham, who cared little whether she meant thatin this case she would have come sooner. She couldn't have come sooner,and she perhaps, on the contrary, meant--for it would have been likeher--that she wouldn't have come at all; why it was so easy being atany rate a matter as to which her companion had begun quickly to pickup views. Susie kept some of these lights for the present to he
rself,since, freely communicated, they might have been a little disturbing;with which, moreover, the quantities that we speak of as surroundingthe two ladies were, in many cases, quantities of things--and of otherthings--to talk about. Their immediate lesson, accordingly, was thatthey just had been caught up by the incalculable strength of a wavethat was actually holding them aloft and that would naturally dash themwherever it liked. They meanwhile, we hasten to add, make the best oftheir precarious position, and if Milly had had no other help for itshe would have found not a little in the sight of Susan Shepherd'sstate. The girl had had nothing to say to her, for three days, aboutthe "success" announced by Lord Mark--which they saw, besides,otherwise established; she was too taken up, too touched, by Susie'sown exaltation. Susie glowed in the light of her justified faith;everything had happened that she had been acute enough to think leastprobable; she had appealed to a possible delicacy in Maud Manningham--adelicacy, mind you, but _barely_ possible--and her appeal had been metin a way that was an honour to human nature. This proved sensibility ofthe lady of Lancaster Gate performed verily, for both our friends,during these first days, the office of a fine floating gold-dust,something that threw over the prospect a harmonising blur. The forms,the colours behind it were strong and deep--we have seen how theyalready stood out for Milly; but nothing, comparatively, had had somuch of the dignity of truth as the fact of Maud's fidelity to asentiment. That was what Susie was proud of, much more than of hergreat place in the world, which she was moreover conscious of not asyet wholly measuring. That was what was more vivid even than herbeing--in senses more worldly and in fact almost in the degree of arevelation--English and distinct and positive, with almost no inward,but with the finest outward resonance.
Susan Shepherd's word for her, again and again, was that she was"large"; yet it was not exactly a case, as to the soul, of echoingchambers: she might have been likened rather to a capacious receptacle,originally perhaps loose, but now drawn as tightly as possible over itsaccumulated contents--a packed mass, for her American admirer, ofcurious detail. When the latter good lady, at home, had handsomelyfigured her friends as not small--which was the way she mostly figuredthem--there was a certain implication that they were spacious becausethey were empty. Mrs. Lowder, by a different law, was spacious becauseshe was full, because she had something in common, even in repose, witha projectile, of great size, loaded and ready for use. That indeed, toSusie's romantic mind, announced itself as half the charm of theirrenewal--a charm as of sitting in springtime, during a long peace, onthe daisied, grassy bank of some great slumbering fortress. True to herpsychological instincts, certainly, Mrs. Stringham had noted that the"sentiment" she rejoiced in on her old schoolmate's part was all amatter of action and movement, was not, save for the interweaving of amore frequent plump "dearest" than she would herself perhaps have used,a matter of much other embroidery. She brooded, with interest, on thisfurther remark of race, feeling in her own spirit a different economy.The joy, for her, was to know _why_ she acted--the reason was half thebusiness; whereas with Mrs. Lowder there might have been no reason:"why" was the trivial seasoning-substance, the vanilla or the nutmeg,omittable from the nutritive pudding without spoiling it. Mrs. Lowder'sdesire was clearly sharp that their young companions should alsoprosper together; and Mrs. Stringham's account of it all to Milly,during the first days, was that when, at Lancaster Gate, she was notoccupied in telling, as it were, about her, she was occupied in hearingmuch of the history of her hostess's brilliant niece.
They had plenty, on these lines, the two elder women, to give and totake, and it was even not quite clear to the pilgrim from Boston thatwhat she should mainly have arranged for in London was not a series ofthrills for herself. She had a bad conscience, indeed almost a sense ofimmorality, in having to recognise that she was, as she said, carriedaway. She laughed to Milly when she also said that she didn't knowwhere it would end; and the principal of her uneasiness was that Mrs.Lowder's life bristled for her with elements that she was really havingto look at for the first time. They represented, she believed, theworld, the world that, as a consequence of the cold shoulder turned toit by the Pilgrim Fathers, had never yet boldly crossed to Boston--itwould surely have sunk the stoutest Cunarder--and she couldn't pretendthat she faced the prospect simply because Milly had had a caprice. Shewas in the act herself of having one, directed precisely to theirpresent spectacle. She could but seek strength in the thought that shehad never had one--or had never yielded to one, which came to the samething--before. The sustaining sense of it all, moreover, as literarymaterial--that quite dropped from her. She must wait, at any rate, sheshould see: it struck her, so far as she had got, as vast, obscure,lurid. She reflected in the watches of the night that she was probablyjust going to love it for itself--that is for itself and Milly. The oddthing was that she could think of Milly's loving it without dread--orwith dread, at least not on the score of conscience, only on the scoreof peace. It was a mercy, at all events, for the hour, that theirfancies jumped together.
While, for this first week that followed their dinner, she drank deepat Lancaster Gate, her companion was no less happily, appeared to beindeed on the whole quite as romantically, provided for. The handsomeEnglish girl from the heavy English house had been as a figure in apicture stepping by magic out of its frame: it was a case, in truth,for which Mrs. Stringham presently found the perfect image. She hadlost none of her grasp, but quite the contrary, of that other conceitin virtue of which Milly was the wandering princess: so what could bemore in harmony now than to see the princess waited upon at the citygate by the worthiest maiden, the chosen daughter of the burgesses? Itwas the real again, evidently, the amusement of the meeting for theprincess too; princesses living for the most part, in such an appeasedway, on the plane of mere elegant representation. That was why theypounced, at city gates, on deputed flower-strewing damsels; that waswhy, after effigies, processions, and other stately games, frank humancompany was pleasant to them. Kate Croy really presented herself toMilly--the latter abounded for Mrs. Stringham in accounts of it--as thewondrous London girl in person, by what she had conceived, from farback, of the London girl; conceived from the tales of travellers andthe anecdotes of New York, from old porings over _Punch_ and a liberalacquaintance with the fiction of the day. The only thing was that shewas nicer, for the creature in question had rather been, to our youngwoman, an image of dread. She had thought of her, at her best, ashandsome just as Kate was, with turns of head and tones of voice,felicities of stature and attitude, things "put on" and, for thatmatter, put off, all the marks of the product of a packed society whoshould be at the same time the heroine of a strong story. She placedthis striking young person from the first in a story, saw her, by anecessity of the imagination, for a heroine, felt it the only characterin which she wouldn't be wasted; and this in spite of the heroine'spleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas andjackets and shoes--as these things sketched themselves to Milly--andsomething rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and theoccasional freedom of her slang.
When Milly had settled that the extent of her goodwill itself made hershy, she had found for the moment quite a sufficient key, and they wereby that time thoroughly afloat together. This might well have been thehappiest hour they were to know, attacking in friendly independencetheir great London--the London of shops and streets and suburbs oddlyinteresting to Milly, as well as of museums, monuments, "sights" oddlyunfamiliar to Kate, while their elders pursued a separate course, bothrejoicing in their intimacy and each thinking the other's young woman agreat acquisition for her own. Milly expressed to Susan Shepherd morethan once that Kate had some secret, some smothered trouble, besidesall the rest of her history; and that if she had so good-naturedlyhelped Mrs. Lowder to meet them this was exactly to create a diversion,to give herself something else to think about. But on the case thuspostulated our young American had as yet had no light: she only feltthat when the light should come it would greatly deepen the colour; andshe liked to think
she was prepared for anything. What she alreadyknew, moreover, was full to her vision, of English, of eccentric, ofThackerayan character, Kate Croy having gradually become not a littleexplicit on the subject of her situation, her past, her present, hergeneral predicament, her small success, up to the present hour, incontenting at the same time her father, her sister, her aunt andherself. It was Milly's subtle guess, imparted to her Susie, that thegirl had somebody else as well, as yet unnamed, to content, it beingmanifest that such a creature couldn't help having; a creature notperhaps, if one would, exactly formed to inspire passions, since thatalways implied a certain silliness, but essentially seen, by theadmiring eye of friendship, under the clear shadow of some probablyeminent male interest. The clear shadow, from whatever sourceprojected, hung, at any rate, over Milly's companion the whole week,and Kate Croy's handsome face smiled out of it, under bland skylights,in the presence alike of old masters passive in their glory and ofthoroughly new ones, the newest, who bristled restlessly with pins andbrandished snipping shears.
It was meanwhile a pretty part of the intercourse of these young ladiesthat each thought the other more remarkable than herself--that eachthought herself, or assured the other she did, a comparatively dustyobject and the other a favourite of nature and of fortune. Kate wasamused, amazed at the way her friend insisted on "taking" her, andMilly wondered if Kate were sincere in finding her the mostextraordinary--quite apart from her being the most charming--person shehad come across. They had talked, in long drives, and quantities ofhistory had not been wanting--in the light of which Mrs. Lowder's niecemight superficially seem to have had the best of the argument. Hervisitor's American references, with their bewildering immensities,their confounding moneyed New York, their excitements of high pressure,their opportunities of wild freedom, their record of used-up relatives,parents, clever, eager, fair, slim brothers--these the most loved--allengaged, as well as successive superseded guardians, in a highextravagance of speculation and dissipation that had left thisexquisite being her black dress, her white face and her vivid hair asthe mere last broken link: such a picture quite threw into the shadethe brief biography, however sketchily amplified, of a meremiddle-class nobody in Bayswater. And though that indeed might be but aBayswater way of putting it, in addition to which Milly was in thestage of interest in Bayswater ways, this critic so far prevailed that,like Mrs. Stringham herself, she fairly got her companion to acceptfrom her that she was quite the nearest approach to a practicalprincess Bayswater could hope ever to know. It was a fact--it becameone at the end of three days--that Milly actually began to borrow fromthe handsome girl a sort of view of her state; the handsome girl'simpression of it was clearly so sincere. This impression was a tribute,a tribute positively to power, power the source of which was the lastthing Kate treated as a mystery. There were passages, under all theirskylights, the succession of their shops being large, in which thelatter's easy, yet the least bit dry manner sufficiently gave out thatif she had had so deep a pocket----!
It was not moreover by any means with not having the imagination ofexpenditure that she appeared to charge her friend, but with not havingthe imagination of terror, of thrift, the imagination or in any degreethe habit of a conscious dependence on others. Such moments, when allWigmore Street, for instance, seemed to rustle about and the pale girlherself to be facing the different rustlers, usually soundiscriminated, as individual Britons too, Britons personal, partiesto a relation and perhaps even intrinsically remarkable--such momentsin especial determined in Kate a perception of the high happiness ofher companion's liberty. Milly's range was thus immense; she had to asknobody for anything, to refer nothing to any one; her freedom, herfortune and her fancy were her law; an obsequious world surrounded her,she could sniff up at every step its fumes. And Kate, in these days,was altogether in the phase of forgiving her so much bliss; in thephase moreover of believing that, should they continue to go ontogether, she would abide in that generosity. She had, at such a pointas this, no suspicion of a rift within the lute--by which we mean notonly none of anything's coming between them, but none of any definiteflaw in so much clearness of quality. Yet, all the same, if Milly, atMrs. Lowder's banquet, had described herself to Lord Mark as kindlyused by the young woman on the other side because of some faintly-feltspecial propriety in it, so there really did match with this,privately, on the young woman's part, a feeling not analysed butdivided, a latent impression that Mildred Theale was not, after all, aperson to change places, to change even chances with. Kate, verily,would perhaps not quite have known what she meant by this reservation,and she came near naming it only when she said to herself that, rich asMilly was, one probably wouldn't--which was singular--ever hate her forit. The handsome girl had, with herself, these felicities andcrudities: it wasn't obscure to her that, without some very particularreason to help, it might have proved a test of one's philosophy not tobe irritated by a mistress of millions, or whatever they were, who, asa girl, so easily might have been, like herself, only vague and fatallyfemale. She was by no means sure of liking Aunt Maud as much as shedeserved, and Aunt Maud's command of funds was obviously inferior toMilly's. There was thus clearly, as pleading for the latter, someinfluence that would later on become distinct; and meanwhile,decidedly, it was enough that she was as charming as she was queer andas queer as she was charming--all of which was a rare amusement; aswell, for that matter, as further sufficient that there were objects ofvalue she had already pressed on Kate's acceptance. A week of hersociety in these conditions--conditions that Milly chose to sum up asministering immensely, for a blind, vague pilgrim, to aid andcomfort--announced itself from an early hour as likely to become a weekof presents, acknowledgments, mementos, pledges of gratitude andadmiration that were all on one side. Kate as promptly embraced thepropriety of making it clear that she must forswear shops till sheshould receive some guarantee that the contents of each one she enteredas a humble companion should not be placed at her feet; yet that was intruth not before she had found herself in possession, under whateverprotests, of several precious ornaments and other minor conveniences.
Great was the absurdity, too, that there should have come a day, by theend of the week, when it appeared that all Milly would have asked indefinite "return," as might be said, was to be told a little about LordMark and to be promised the privilege of a visit to Mrs. Condrip. Farother amusements had been offered her, but her eagerness wasshamelessly human, and she seemed really to count more on therevelation of the anxious lady of Chelsea than on the best nights ofthe opera. Kate admired, and showed it, such an absence of fear: to thefear of being bored, in such a connection, she would have been soobviously entitled. Milly's answer to this was the plea of hercuriosities--which left her friend wondering as to their odd direction.Some among them, no doubt, were rather more intelligible, and Kate hadheard without wonder that she was blank about Lord Mark. This younglady's account of him, at the same time, professed itself as franklyimperfect; for what they best knew him by at Lancaster Gate was a thingdifficult to explain. One knew people in general by something they hadto show, something that, either for them or against, could be touchedor named or proved; and she could think of no other case of a valuetaken as so great and yet flourishing untested. His value was hisfuture, which had somehow got itself as accepted by Aunt Maud as if ithad been his good cook or his steam-launch. She, Kate, didn't mean shethought him a humbug; he might do great things--but they were all, asyet, so to speak, he had done. On the other hand it was of coursesomething of an achievement, and not open to every one, to have gotone's self taken so seriously by Aunt Maud. The best thing about him,doubtless, on the whole, was that Aunt Maud believed in him. She wasoften fantastic, but she knew a humbug, and--no, Lord Mark wasn't that.He had been a short time in the House, on the Tory side, but had losthis seat on the first opportunity, and this was all he had to point to.However, he pointed to nothing; which was very possibly just a sign ofhis real cleverness, one of those that the really clever had in commonwith the really void. Even Aunt
Maud frequently admitted that there wasa good deal, for her view of him, to come up in the rear. And he wasn'tmeanwhile himself indifferent--indifferent to himself--for he wasworking Lancaster Gate for all it was worth: just as it was, no doubt,working _him,_ and just as the working and the worked were in London,as one might explain, the parties to every relation.
Kate did explain, for her listening friend: every one who had anythingto give--it was true they were the fewest--made the sharpest possiblebargain for it, got at least its value in return. The strangest thing,furthermore, was that this might be, in cases, a happy understanding.The worker in one connection was the worked in another; it was as broadas it was long--with the wheels of the system, as might be seen,wonderfully oiled. People could quite like each other in the midst ofit, as Aunt Maud, by every appearance, quite liked Lord Mark, and asLord Mark, it was to be hoped, liked Mrs. Lowder, since if he didn't hewas a greater brute than one could believe. She, Kate, had not yet, itwas true, made out what he was doing for her--besides which the dearwoman needed him, even at the most he could do, much less than sheimagined; so far as all of which went, moreover, there were plenty ofthings on every side she had not yet made out. She believed, on thewhole, in any one Aunt Maud took up; and she gave it to Milly as worththinking of that, whatever wonderful people this young lady might meetin the land, she would meet no more extraordinary woman. There weregreater celebrities by the million, and of course greater swells, but abigger _person,_ by Kate's view, and a larger natural handful everyway, would really be far to seek. When Milly inquired with interest ifKate's belief in _her_ was primarily on the lines of what Mrs. Lowder"took up," her interlocutress could handsomely say yes, since by thesame principle she believed in herself. Whom but Aunt Maud's niece,pre-eminently, had Aunt Maud taken up, and who was thus more in thecurrent, with her, of working and of being worked? "You may ask," Katesaid, "what in the world I have to give; and that indeed is just whatI'm trying to learn. There must be something, for her to think she canget it out of me. She _will_ get it--trust her; and then I shall seewhat it is; which I beg you to believe I should never have found outfor myself." She declined to treat any question of Milly's own "paying"power as discussable; that Milly would pay a hundred per cent.--andeven to the end, doubtless, through the nose--was just the beautifulbasis on which they found themselves.
These were fine facilities, pleasantries, ironies, all these luxuriesof gossip and philosophies of London and of life, and they becamequickly, between the pair, the common form of talk, Milly professingherself delighted to know that something was to be done with her. Ifthe most remarkable woman in England was to do it, so much the better,and if the most remarkable woman in England had them both in handtogether, why, what could be jollier for each? When she reflectedindeed a little on the oddity of her wanting two at once, Kate had thenatural reply that it was exactly what showed her sincerity. Sheinvariably gave way to feeling, and feeling had distinctly popped up inher on the advent of her girlhood's friend. The way the cat would jumpwas always, in presence of anything that moved her, interesting to see;visibly enough, moreover, for a long time, it hadn't jumped anythinglike so far. This, in fact, as we already know, remained the marvel forMilly Theale, who, on sight of Mrs. Lowder, found fifty links inrespect to Susie absent from the chain of association. She knew soherself what she thought of Susie that she would have expected the ladyof Lancaster Gate to think something quite different; the failure ofwhich endlessly mystified her. But her mystification was the cause forher of another fine impression, inasmuch as when she went so far as toobserve to Kate that Susan Shepherd--and especially Susan Shepherdemerging so uninvited from an irrelevant past--ought, by all theproprieties, simply to have bored Aunt Maud, her confidant agreed withher without a protest and abounded in the sense of her wonder. SusanShepherd at least bored the niece--that was plain; this young woman sawnothing in her--nothing to account for anything, not even for Milly'sown indulgence: which little fact became in turn to the latter's mind afact of significance. It was a light on the handsome girl--representingmore than merely showed--that poor Susie was simply as nought to her.This was, in a manner too, a general admonition to poor Susie'scompanion, who seemed to see marked by it the direction in which shehad best most look out.
It just faintly rankled in her that a person who was good enough and tospare for Milly Theale shouldn't be good enough for another girl;though, oddly enough, she could easily have forgiven Mrs. Lowderherself the impatience. Mrs. Lowder didn't feel it, and Kate Croy feltit with ease; yet in the end, be it added, she grasped the reason, andthe reason enriched her mind. Wasn't it sufficiently the reason thatthe handsome girl was, with twenty other splendid qualities, the leastbit brutal too, and didn't she suggest, as no one yet had ever done forher new friend, that there might be a wild beauty in that, and even astrange grace? Kate wasn't brutally brutal--which Milly had hithertobenightedly supposed the only way; she wasn't even aggressively so, butrather indifferently, defensively and, as might be said, by the habitof anticipation. She simplified in advance, was beforehand with herdoubts, and knew with singular quickness what she wasn't, as they saidin New York, going to like. In that way at least people were clearlyquicker in England than at home; and Milly could quite see, after alittle, how such instincts might become usual in a world in whichdangers abounded. There were more dangers, clearly, round aboutLancaster Gate than one suspected in New York or could dream of inBoston. At all events, with more sense of them, there were moreprecautions, and it was a remarkable world altogether in which therecould be precautions, on whatever ground, against Susie.
IX
She certainly made up with Susie directly, however, for any allowanceshe might have had privately to extend to tepid appreciation since thelate and long talks of these two embraced not only everything offeredand suggested by the hours they spent apart, but a good deal morebesides. She might be as detached as the occasion required at fouro'clock in the afternoon, but she used no such freedom to any one aboutanything as she habitually used about everything to Susan Shepherd atmidnight. All the same, it should with much less delay than this havebeen mentioned, she had not yet--had not, that is, at the end of sixdays--produced any news for her comrade to compare with an announcementmade her by the latter as a result of a drive with Mrs. Lowder, for achange, in the remarkable Battersea Park. The elder friends hadsociably revolved there while the younger ones followed bolder fanciesin the admirable equipage appointed to Milly at the hotel--a heavier,more emblazoned, more amusing chariot than she had ever, with "stables"notoriously mismanaged, known at home; whereby, in the course of thecircuit, more than once repeated, it had "come out," as Mrs. Stringhamsaid, that the couple at Lancaster Gate were, of all people, acquaintedwith Mildred's other English friend--the gentleman, the one connectedwith the English newspaper (Susie hung fire a little over his name) whohad been with her in New York so shortly previous to presentadventures. He had been named of course in Battersea Park--else hecouldn't have been identified; and Susie had naturally, before shecould produce her own share in the matter as a kind of confession, tomake it plain that her allusion was to Mr. Merton Densher. This wasbecause Milly had at first a little air of not knowing whom she meant;and the girl really kept, as well, a certain control of herself whileshe remarked that the case was surprising, the chance one in athousand. They knew him, both Maud and Miss Croy knew him, she gatheredtoo, rather well, though indeed it was not on any show of intimacy thathe had happened to be mentioned. It had not been--Susie made thepoint--she herself who brought him in: he had in fact not been broughtin at all, but only referred to as a young journalist known to Mrs.Lowder and who had lately gone to their wonderful country--Mrs. Lowderalways said "your wonderful country"--on behalf of his journal. ButMrs. Stringham had taken it up--with the tips of her fingers indeed;and that was the confession: she had, without meaning any harm,recognised Mr. Densher as an acquaintance of Milly's, though she hadalso pulled herself up before getting in too far. Mrs. Lowder had beenstruck, clearly--it wasn'
t too much to say; then she also, it hadrather seemed, had pulled herself up; and there had been a littlemoment during which each might have been keeping something from theother. "Only," said Milly's mate, "I luckily remembered in time that Ihad nothing whatever to keep--which was much simpler and nicer. I don'tknow what Maud has, but there it is. She was interested, distinctly, inyour knowing him--in his having met you over there with so little lossof time. But I ventured to tell her it hadn't been so long as to makeyou as yet great friends. I don't know if I was right."
Whatever time this explanation might have taken, there had been momentsenough in the matter now--before the elder woman's conscience had doneitself justice--to enable Milly to reply that although the fact inquestion doubtless had its importance she imagined they wouldn't findthe importance overwhelming. It _was_ odd that their one Englishmanshould so instantly fit; it wasn't, however, miraculous--they surelyall had often seen that, as every one said, the world wasextraordinarily "small." Undoubtedly, too, Susie had done just theplain thing in not letting his name pass. Why in the world should therebe a mystery?--and what an immense one they would appear to have madeif he should come back and find they had concealed their knowledge ofhim! "I don't know, Susie dear," the girl observed, "what you think Ihave to conceal."
"It doesn't matter, at a given moment," Mrs. Stringham returned, "whatyou know or don't know as to what I think; for you always find out thevery next moment, and when you do find out, dearest, you never _really_care. Only," she presently asked, "have you heard of him from MissCroy?"
"Heard of Mr. Densher? Never a word. We haven't mentioned him. Whyshould we?"
"That _you_ haven't, I understand; but that she hasn't," Susie opined,"may mean something."
"May mean what?"
"Well," Mrs. Stringham presently brought out, "I tell you all when Itell you that Maud asks me to suggest to you that it may perhaps bebetter for the present not to speak of him: not to speak of him to herniece, that is, unless she herself speaks to you first. But Maud thinksshe won't."
Milly was ready to engage for anything; but in respect to the facts--asthey so far possessed them--it all sounded a little complicated. "Is itbecause there's anything between them?"
"No--I gather not; but Maud's state of mind is precautionary. She'safraid of something. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say she'safraid of everything."
"She's afraid, you mean," Milly asked, "of their--a--liking each other?"
Susie had an intense thought and then an effusion. "My dear child, wemove in a labyrinth."
"Of course we do. That's just the fun of it!" said Milly with a strangegaiety. Then she added: "Don't tell me that--in this forinstance--there are not abysses. I want abysses."
Her friend looked at her--it was not unfrequently the case--a littleharder than the surface of the occasion seemed to require; and anotherperson present at such times might have wondered to what inner thoughtof her own the good lady was trying to fit the speech. It was too muchher disposition, no doubt, to treat her young companion's words assymptoms of an imputed malady. It was none the less, however, herhighest law to be light when the girl was light. She knew how to bequaint with the new quaintness--the great Boston gift; it had been,happily, her note in the magazines; and Maud Lowder, to whom it was newindeed and who had never heard anything remotely like it, quitecherished her, as a social resource, for it. It should not thereforefail her now; with it in fact one might face most things. "Ah, then letus hope we shall sound the depths--I'm prepared for the worst--ofsorrow and sin! But she would like her niece--we're not ignorant ofthat, are we?--to marry Lord Mark. Hasn't she told you so?"
"Hasn't Mrs. Lowder told me?"
"No; hasn't Kate? It isn't, you know, that she doesn't know it."
Milly had, under her comrade's eyes, a minute of mute detachment. Shehad lived with Kate Croy for several days in a state of intimacy asdeep as it had been sudden, and they had clearly, in talk, in manydirections, proceeded to various extremities. Yet it now came over heras in a clear cold way that there was a possible account of theirrelations in which the quantity her new friend had told her might havefigured as small, as smallest, beside the quantity she hadn't. Shecouldn't say, at any rate, whether or no she had made the point thather aunt designed her for Lord Mark: it had only sufficiently comeout--which had been, moreover, eminently guessable--that she wasinvolved in her aunt's designs. Somehow, for Milly, brush it overnervously as she might and with whatever simplifying hand, this abruptextrusion of Mr. Densher altered all proportions, had an effect on allvalues. It was fantastic of her to let it make a difference that shecouldn't in the least have defined--and she was at least, even duringthese instants, rather proud of being able to hide, on the spot, thedifference it did make. Yet, all the same, the effect for her was,almost violently, of Mr. Densher's having been there--having been whereshe had stood till now in her simplicity--before her. It would havetaken but another free moment to make her see abysses--since abysseswere what she wanted--in the mere circumstance of his own silence, inNew York, about his English friends. There had really been in New Yorklittle time for anything; but, had she liked, Milly could have made itout for herself that he had avoided the subject of Miss Croy, and thatMiss Croy was yet a subject it could never be natural to avoid. It wasto be added at the same time that even if his silence had beenlabyrinthe--which was absurd in view of all the other things too hecouldn't possibly have spoken of--this was exactly what must suit her,since it fell under the head of the plea she had just uttered to Susie.These things, however, came and went, and it set itself up between thecompanions, for the occasion, in the oddest way, both that theirhappening all to know Mr. Densher--except indeed that Susie didn't, butprobably would,--was a fact belonging, in a world of rushing about, toone of the common orders of chance; and yet further that it wasamusing--oh, awfully amusing!--to be able fondly to hope that there was"something in" its having been left to crop up with such suddenness.There seemed somehow a possibility that the ground or, as it were, theair might, in a manner, have undergone some pleasing preparationthough the question of this possibility would probably, after all, havetaken some threshing out. The truth, moreover--and there they were,already, our pair, talking about it, the "truth!"--had not in factquite cropped out. This, obviously, in view of Mrs. Lowder's request toher old friend.
It was accordingly on Mrs. Lowder's recommendation that nothing shouldbe said to Kate--it was on this rich attitude of Aunt Maud's that theidea of an interesting complication might best hope to perch; and when,in fact, after the colloquy we have reported Milly saw Kate againwithout mentioning any name, her silence succeeded in passing musterwith her as the beginning of a new sort of fun. The sort was all thenewer by reason of its containing a small element of anxiety: when shehad gone in for fun before it had been with her hands a little morefree. Yet it _was,_ none the less, rather exciting to be conscious of astill sharper reason for interest in the handsome girl, as Katecontinued, even now, pre-eminently to remain for her; and areason--this was the great point--of which the young woman herselfcould have no suspicion. Twice over, thus, for two or three hourstogether, Milly found herself seeing Kate, quite fixing her in thelight of the knowledge that it was a face on which Mr. Densher's eyeshad more or less familiarly rested and which, by the same token, hadlooked, rather _more_ beautifully than less, into his own. She pulledherself up indeed with the thought that it had inevitably looked, asbeautifully as one would, into thousands of faces in which one mightone's self never trace it; but just the odd result of the thought wasto intensify for the girl that side of her friend which she haddoubtless already been more prepared than she quite knew to think of asthe "other," the not wholly calculable. It was fantastic, and Milly wasaware of this; but the other side was what had, of a sudden, beenturned straight towards her by the show of Mr. Densher's propinquity.She hadn't the excuse of knowing it for Kate's own, since nothingwhatever as yet proved it particularly to be such. Never mind; it waswith this other side now fully presented that K
ate came and went,kissed her for greeting and for parting, talked, as usual, ofeverything but--as it had so abruptly become for Milly--_the_ thing.Our young woman, it is true, would doubtless not have tasted so sharplya difference in this pair of occasions had she not been tasting sopeculiarly her own possible betrayals. What happened was thatafterwards, on separation, she wondered if the matter had not mainlybeen that she herself was so "other," so taken up with the unspoken;the strangest thing of all being, still subsequently, that when sheasked herself how Kate could have failed to feel it she becameconscious of being here on the edge of a great darkness. She shouldnever know how Kate truly felt about anything such a one as MillyTheale should give her to feel. Kate would never--and not fromill-will, nor from duplicity, but from a sort of failure of commonterms--reduce it to such a one's comprehension or put it within herconvenience.
It was as such a one, therefore, that, for three or four days more,Milly watched Kate as just such another; and it was presently as such aone that she threw herself into their promised visit, at last achieved,to Chelsea, the quarter of the famous Carlyle, the field of exercise ofhis ghost, his votaries, and the residence of "poor Marian," so oftenreferred to and actually a somewhat incongruous spirit there. With ouryoung woman's first view of poor Marian everything gave way but thesense of how, in England, apparently, the social situation of sisterscould be opposed, how common ground, for a place in the world, couldquite fail them: a state of things sagely perceived to be involved inan hierarchical, an aristocratic order. Just whereabouts in the orderMrs. Lowder had established her niece was a question not wholly void,as yet, no doubt, of ambiguity--though Milly was withal sure Lord Markcould exactly have fixed the point if he would, fixing it at the sametime for Aunt Maud herself; but it was clear that Mrs. Condrip was, asmight have been said, in quite another geography. She would not, inshort, have been to be found on the same social map, and it was as ifher visitors had turned over page after page together before the finalrelief of their benevolent "Here!" The interval was bridged, of course,but the bridge, verily, was needed, and the impression left Milly towonder whether, in the general connection, it were of bridges or ofintervals that the spirit not locally disciplined would find itselfmost conscious. It was as if at home, by contrast, there wereneither--neither the difference itself, from position to position, nor,on either side, and particularly on one, the awfully good manner, theconscious sinking of a consciousness, that made up for it. Theconscious sinking, at all events, and the awfully good manner, thedifference, the bridge, the interval, the skipped leaves of the socialatlas--these, it was to be confessed, had a little, for our young lady,in default of stouter stuff, to work themselves into the light literarylegend--a mixed, wandering echo of Trollope, of Thackeray, perhapsmostly of Dickens--under favour of which her pilgrimage had so muchappealed. She could relate to Susie later on, late the same evening,that the legend, before she had done with it, had run clear, that theadored author of _The Newcomes_, in fine, had been on the whole thenote: the picture lacking thus more than she had hoped, or ratherperhaps showing less than she had feared, a certain possibility ofPickwickian outline. She explained how she meant by this that Mrs.Condrip had not altogether proved another Mrs. Nickleby, nor even--forshe might have proved almost anything, from the way poor worried Katehad spoken--a widowed and aggravated Mrs. Micawber.
Mrs. Stringham, in the midnight conference, intimated rather yearninglythat, however the event might have turned, the side of English lifesuch experiences opened to Milly were just those she herself seemed"booked"--as they were all, roundabout her now, always saying--to miss:she had begun to have a little, for her fellow-observer, these momentsof fanciful reaction--reaction in which she was once more all SusanShepherd--against the high sphere of colder conventions into which heroverwhelming connection with Maud Manningham had rapt her. Milly neverlost sight, for long, of the Susan Shepherd side of her, and was alwaysthere to meet it when it came up and vaguely, tenderly, impatiently topat it, abounding in the assurance that they would still provide forit. They had, however, to-night, another matter in hand; which provedto be presently, on the girl's part, in respect to her hour of Chelsea,the revelation that Mrs. Condrip, taking a few minutes when Kate wasaway with one of the children, in bed upstairs for some smallcomplaint, had suddenly, without its being in the least "led up to,"broken ground on the subject of Mr. Densher, mentioned him withimpatience as a person in love with her sister. "She wished me, if Icared for Kate, to know," Milly said--"for it would be quite toodreadful, and one might do something."
Susie wondered. "Prevent anything coming of it? That's easily said. Dowhat?"
Milly had a dim smile. "I think that what she would like is that Ishould come a good deal to see her about it."
"And doesn't she suppose you've anything else to do?"
The girl had by this time clearly made it out. "Nothing but to admireand make much of her sister--whom she doesn't, however, herself in theleast understand--and give up one's time, and everything else, to it."It struck the elder friend that she spoke with an almost unprecedentedapproach to sharpness; as if Mrs. Condrip had been rather speciallydisconcerting. Never yet so much as just of late had Mrs. Stringhamseen her companion as exalted, and by the very play of somethingwithin, into a vague golden air that left irritation below. That wasthe great thing with Milly--it was her characteristic poetry; or atleast it was Susan Shepherd's. "But she made a point," the formercontinued, "of my keeping what she says from Kate. I'm not to mentionthat she has spoken."
"And why," Mrs. Stringham presently asked, "is Mr. Densher so dreadful?"
Milly had, she thought, an hesitation--something that suggested afuller talk with Mrs. Condrip than she inclined perhaps to report. "Itisn't so much he himself." Then the girl spoke a little as for theromance of it; one could never tell, with her, where romance would comein. "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'tthe least idea."
To which, for the time, Susie only answered "Oh!"--though by the end ofa minute she had followed it with a slightly musing "I see"; and thatin 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 hadalready 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 anysuch person. Mr. Densher, she holds that's the way, at any rate, it wasexplained to me--won't ever be either a public man or a rich man. If hewere public she'd be willing, as I understand, to help him; if he wererich--without being anything else--she'd do her best to swallow him. Asit is, she taboos him."
"In short," said Mrs. Stringham as with a private purpose, "she toldyou, 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 fatiguethat had recently more than once marked themselves for her companion,Milly turned away. Yet the matter was not left so, that night, betweenthem, albeit neither perhaps could afterwards have said which had firstcome back to it. Milly's own nearest approach, at least, for a little,to doing so, was to remark that they appeared all--every one theysaw--to think tremendously of money. This prompted in Susie a laugh,not untender, the innocent meaning of which was that it came, as asubject for indifference, money did, easier to some people than toothers: she made the point in fairness
, however, that you couldn't havetold, by any too crude transparency of air, what place it held for MaudManningham. She did her worldliness with grand proper silences--if itmightn't better be put perhaps that she did her detachment with grandoccasional pushes. However Susie put it, in truth, she was really, injustice to herself, thinking of the difference, as favourites offortune, between her old friend and her new. Aunt Maud sat somehow inthe midst of her money, founded on it and surrounded by it, even ifwith a clever high manner about it, her manner of looking, hard andbright, as if it weren't there. Milly, about hers, had no manner atall--which was possibly, from a point of view, a fault: she was at anyrate far away on the edge of it, and you hadn't, as might be said, inorder to get at her nature, to traverse, by whatever avenue, any pieceof her property. It was clear, on the other hand, that Mrs. Lowder waskeeping her wealth as for purposes, imaginations, ambitions, that wouldfigure as large, as honourably unselfish, on the day they should takeeffect. She would impose her will, but her will would be only that aperson or two shouldn't lose a benefit by not submitting if they couldbe made to submit. To Milly, as so much younger, such far viewscouldn't be imputed: there was nobody she was supposable as interestedfor. It was too soon, since she wasn't interested for herself. Even therichest woman, at her age, lacked motive, and Milly's motive doubtlesshad plenty of time to arrive. She was meanwhile beautiful, simple,sublime without it--whether missing it and vaguely reaching out for itor not; and with it, for that matter, in the event, would really bethese things just as much. Only then she might very well have, likeAunt Maud, a manner. Such were the connections, at all events, in whichthe colloquy of our two ladies freshly flickered up--in which it cameround that the elder asked the younger if she had herself, in theafternoon, named Mr. Densher as an acquaintance.
"Oh no--I said nothing of having seen him. I remembered," the girlexplained, "Mrs. Lowder's wish."
"But that," her friend observed after a moment, "was for silence toKate."
"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 thather sister should be brought to think ill of him; and if anything shecan tell her will help that--" But Milly dropped suddenly here, as ifher companion would see.
Her companion's interest, however, was all for what she herself saw."You mean she'll immediately speak?" Mrs. Stringham gathered that thiswas what Milly meant, but it left still a question. "How will it beagainst him that you know him?"
"Oh, I don't know. It won't be so much one's knowing him as one'shaving kept it out of sight."
"Ah," said Mrs. Stringham, as if for comfort, _"you_ haven't kept itout of sight. Isn't it much rather Miss Croy herself who has?"
"It isn't my acquaintance with him," Milly smiled, "that she hasdissimulated."
"She has dissimulated only her own? Well then, the responsibility'shers."
"Ah but," said the girl, not perhaps with marked consequence, "she hasa right to do as she likes."
"Then so, my dear, have you!" smiled Susan Shepherd.
Milly looked at her as if she were almost venerably simple, but also asif this were what one loved her for. "We're not quarrelling about it,Kate and I, _yet."_
"I only meant," Mrs. Stringham explained, "that I don't see what Mrs.Condrip would gain."
"By her being able to tell Kate?" Milly thought. "I only meant that Idon't see what I myself should gain."
"But it will have to come out--that he knows you both--some time."
Milly scarce assented. "Do you mean when he comes back?"
"He'll find you both here, and he can hardly be looked to, I take it,to 'cut' either of you for the sake of the other."
This placed the question at last on a basis more distinctly cheerful."I might get at him somehow beforehand," the girl suggested; "I mightgive him what they call here the tip--that he's not to know me when wemeet. Or, better still, I mightn't be here at all."
"Do you want to run away from him?"
It was, oddly enough, an idea Milly seemed half to accept. "I don'tknow _what_ I want to run away from!"
It dispelled, on the spot--something, to the elder woman's ear, in thesad, sweet sound of it--any ghost of any need of explaining. The sensewas constant for her that their relation was as if afloat, like someisland of the south, in a great warm sea that made, for everyconceivable chance, a margin, an outer sphere of general emotion andthe effect of the occurrence of anything in particular was to make thesea submerge the island, the margin flood the text. The great wave nowfor a moment swept over. "I'll go anywhere else in the world you like."
But Milly came up through it. "Dear old Susie--how I do work you!"
"Oh, this is nothing yet."
"No indeed--to what it will be."
"You're not--and it's vain to pretend," said dear old Susie, who hadbeen taking her in, "as sound and strong as I insist on having you."
"Insist, insist--the more the better. But the day I _look_ as sound andstrong as that, you know," Milly went on--"on that day I shall be justsound and strong enough to take leave of you sweetly for ever. That'swhere one is," she continued thus agreeably to embroider, "when evenone's _most_ 'beaux moments' aren't such as to qualify, so far asappearance goes, for anything gayer than a handsome cemetery. SinceI've lived all these years as if I were dead, I shall die, no doubt, asif I were alive--which will happen to be as you want me. So, you see,"she wound up, "you'll never really know where I am. Except indeed whenI'm gone; and then you'll only know where I'm not."
"I'd die _for_ you," said Susan Shepherd after a moment.
"'Thanks awfully'! Then stay here for me."
"But we can't be in London for August, nor for many of all these nextweeks."
"Then we'll go back."
Susie blenched. "Back to America?"
"No, abroad--to Switzerland, Italy, anywhere. I mean by your stayinghere for me," Milly pursued, "your staying with me wherever I may be,even though we may neither of us know at the time where it is. No," sheinsisted, "I _don't_ know where I am, and you never will, and itdoesn't matter--and I dare say it's quite true," she broke off, "thateverything will have to come out." Her friend would have felt of herthat she joked about it now, had not her scale from grave to gay been athing of such unnamable shades that her contrasts were never sharp. Shemade up for failures of gravity by failures of mirth; if she hadn't,that is, been at times as earnest as might have been liked, so she wascertain not to be at other times as easy as she would like herself. "Imust face the music. It isn't, at any rate, its 'coming out,'" sheadded; "it's that Mrs. Condrip would put the fact before her to hisinjury."
Her companion wondered. "But how to _his?"_
"Why, if he pretends to love her----!"
"And does he only 'pretend'?"
"I mean if, trusted by her in strange countries, he forgets her so faras to make up to other people."
The amendment, however, brought Susie in, as if with gaiety, for acomfortable end. "Did he make up, the false creature, to _you?"_
"No--but the question isn't of that. It's of what Kate might be made tobelieve."
"That, given the fact that he evidently more or less followed up hisacquaintance with you, to say nothing of your obvious weird charm, hemust have been all ready if you had at all led him on?"
Milly neither accepted nor qualified this; she only said, after amoment, as with a conscious excess of the pensive: "No, I don't thinkshe'd quite wish to suggest that I made up to _him;_ for that I shouldhave had to do so would only bring out his constancy. All I mean is,"she added--and now at last, as with a supreme impatience "that herbeing able to make him out a little a person who could give cause forjealousy would evidently help her, since she's afraid of him, to do himin her sister's mind a useful ill turn."
Susan Shepherd perceived in this explanation such signs of an appetitefor motive as would have sat gracefully even on one of her own NewEngland heroines. I
t was seeing round several corners; but that waswhat New England heroines did, and it was moreover interesting for themoment to make out how many really her young friend had undertaken tosee round. Finally, too, weren't they braving the deeps? They got theiramusement where they could. "Isn't it only," she asked, "ratherprobable she'd see that Kate's knowing him as (what's the pretty oldword?) _volage_----?"
"Well?" She hadn't filled out her idea, but neither, it seemed, couldMilly.
"Well, might but do what that often does--by all _our_ blessed littlelaws and arrangements at least; excite Kate's own sentiment instead ofdepressing it."
The idea was bright, yet the girl but beautifully stared. "Kate's ownsentiment? Oh, she didn't speak of that. I don't think," she added asif she had been unconsciously giving a wrong impression, "I don't thinkMrs. Condrip imagines _she's_ in love."
It made Mrs. Stringham stare in turn. "Then what's her fear?"
"Well, only the fact of Mr. Densher's possibly himself keeping itup--the fear of some final result from _that._
"Oh," said Susie, intellectually a little disconcerted--"she looks farahead!"
At this, however, Milly threw off another of her sudden vague "sports.""No--it's only we who do."
"Well, don't let us be more interested for them than they are forthemselves!"
"Certainly not"--the girl promptly assented. A certain interestnevertheless remained; she appeared to wish to be clear. "It wasn't ofanything on Kate's own part she spoke."
"You mean she thinks her sister does _not_ care for him?"
It was still as if, for an instant, Milly had to be sure of what shemeant; but there it presently was. "If she did care Mrs. Condrip wouldhave told me."
What Susan Shepherd seemed hereupon for a little to wonder was why thenthey had been talking so. "But did you ask her?"
"Ah, no!"
"Oh!" said Susan Shepherd.
Milly, however, easily explained that she wouldn't have asked her forthe world.