II
THIS came home to me when, two days later, I drove over
with Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman;
and all the more for an incident that, presenting itself the
second evening, had deeply disconcerted me. The first day
had been, on the whole, as I have expressed, reassuring; but I
was to see it wind up in keen apprehension. The postbag, that
evening,—it came late,—contained a letter for me, which,
however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be
composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed
to himself, with a seal still unbroken. “This, I recognise, is
from the head-master, and the head-master’s an awful bore.
Read him, please; deal with him; but mind you don’t report.
Not a word. I’m off!” I broke the seal with a great effort—so
great a one that I was a long time coming to it; took the
unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it
just before going to bed. I had better have let it wait till
morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no
counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it
finally got so the better of me that I determined to open
myself at least to Mrs. Grose.
“What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.”
She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment;
then, visibly, with a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it
back. “But aren’t they all—?”
“Sent home—yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may
never go back at all.”
Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They
won’t take him?”
18
HENRY JAMES 19
“They absolutely decline.”
At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from
me; I saw them fill with good tears. “What has he done?”
I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my
letter—which, however, had the effect of making her,
without taking it, simply put her hands behind her. She
shook her head sadly. “Such things are not for me, Miss.”
My counsellor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake,
which I attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to
repeat it to her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up
once more, I put it back in my pocket. “Is he really bad?”
The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say
so?”
“They go into no particulars. They simply express their
regret that it should be impossible to keep him. That can
have only one meaning.” Mrs. Grose listened with dumb
emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be;
so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and
with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went
on: “That he’s an injury to the others.”
At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she
suddenly flamed up. “Master Miles! him an injury?”
There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I
had not yet seen the child, my very fears made me jump to
the absurdity of the idea. I found myself, to meet my friend
the better, offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. “To his poor
little innocent mates!”
“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel
things! Why, he’s scarce ten years old.”
“Yes, yes; it would be incredible.”
She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See
him, Miss, first. Then believe it!” I felt forthwith a new
impatience to see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity
20 THE TURN OF THE SCREW
that, for all the next hours, was to deepen almost to pain.
Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had
produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. “You
might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her,” she
added the next moment—“look at her!”
I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I
had established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white
paper, a pencil, and a copy of nice “round O’s,” now
presented herself to view at the open door. She expressed in
her little way an extraordinary detachment from disagreeable
duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light
that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she
had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary
that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to
feel the full force of Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching
my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which there
was a sob of atonement.
None the less, the rest of the day I watched for further
occasion to approach my colleague, especially as, toward
evening, I began to fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I
overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; we went down
together, and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there
with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me at noon
as a declaration that you’ve never known him to be bad.”
She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time,
and very honestly, adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known
him—I don’t pretend that!”
I was upset again. “Then you have known him—?”
“Yes indeed, Miss, thank God!”
On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who
never is—?”
“Is no boy for me!”
HENRY JAMES 21
I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be
naughty?” Then, keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I
eagerly brought out. “But not to the degree to contaminate—”
“To contaminate?”—my big word left her at a loss. I
explained it. “To corrupt.”
She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her
an odd laugh. “Are you afraid he’ll corrupt you?” She put the
question with such a fine bold humour that, with a laugh, a
little silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the
time to the apprehension of ridicule.
But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I
cropped up in another place. “What was the lady who was
here before?”
“The last governess? She was also young and pretty—
almost as young and almost as pretty, Miss, even as you.”
“Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!”
I recollect throwing off. “He seems to like us young and
pretty!”
“Oh, he did,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he
liked everyone!” She had no sooner spoken indeed than she
caught herself up. “I mean that’s his way—the master’s.”
I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?”
She looked blank, but she coloured. “Why, of him.”
“Of the master?”
“Of who else?”
There was so obviously no one else that the next
moment I had lost my impression of her having accidentally
said more than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted
to know. “Did she see anything in the boy—?”
“That wasn’t right? She never told me.”
I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she careful—
particular?”
22 THE TURN OF THE SCREW
Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About
some things—yes.”
“But not about all?”
Again she considered. “Well, Miss—she’s gone. I
won’t tell tales.”
“I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply;
but I thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this
concession to pursue: “Did she die here?”
“No—she went off.”
I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs.
Grose’s that struck me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?”
Mrs. Grose looked straight out of the window, but I felt that,
hypothetically, I had a right to know what young persons
engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill, you
mean, and went home?”
“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house.
She left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for
a short holiday, to which the time she had put in had
certainly given her a right. We had then a young woman—a
nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl and
clever; and she took the children altogether for the interval.
But our young lady never came back, and at the very
moment I was expecting her I heard from the master that she
was dead.”
I turned this over. “But of what?”
“He never told me! But please, Miss,” said Mrs. Grose,
“I must get to my work.”
