IV
IT was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I
was rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at
Bly—a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable
relative kept in unsuspected confinement? I can’t say how
long I turned it over, or how long, in a confusion of curiosity
and dread, I remained where I had my collision; I only recall
that when I re-entered the house darkness had quite closed
in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and
driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have
walked three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more
overwhelmed that this mere dawn of alarm was a
comparatively human chill. The most singular part of it in
fact—singular as the rest had been—was the part I became,
in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture
comes back to me in the general train—the impression, as I
received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space,
bright in the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet,
and of the good surprised look of my friend, which
immediately told me she had missed me. It came to me
straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness,
mere relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing
whatever that could bear upon the incident I had there ready
for her. I had not suspected in advance that her comfortable
face would pull me up, and I somehow measured the
importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself
hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history
seems to me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear
was one, as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my
30
HENRY JAMES 31
companion. On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and
with her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn’t then have
phrased, achieved an inward resolution—offered a vague
pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the
night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as
possible to my room.
Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it
was a queer affair enough. There were hours, from day to
day,—or at least there were moments, snatched even from
clear duties,—when I had to shut myself up to think. It was
not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could bear to
be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the
truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the
truth that I could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor
with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed
to me, so intimately concerned. It took little time to see that I
could sound without forms of inquiry and without exciting
remark any domestic complication. The shock I had suffered
must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of
three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I
had not been practised upon by the servants nor made the
object of any “game.” Of whatever it was that I knew
nothing was known around me. There was but one sane
inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That was
what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door
to say to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an
intrusion; some unscrupulous traveller, curious in old houses,
had made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from
the best point of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he
had given me such a bold hard stare, that was but a part of
his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that we should
surely see no more of him.
32 THE TURN OF THE SCREW
This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me
to judge that what, essentially, made nothing else much
signify was simply my charming work. My charming work
was just my life with Miles and Flora, and through nothing
could I so like it as through feeling that I could throw myself
into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was a
constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my
original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the
probable grey prose of my office. There was to be no grey
prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not
be charming that presented itself as daily beauty? It was all
the romance of the nursery and the poetry of the schoolroom.
I don’t mean by this, of course, that we studied only fiction
and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort of
interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that
except by saying that instead of growing used to them—and
it’s a marvel for a governess: I call the sisterhood to
witness!—I made constant fresh discoveries. There was one
direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped:
deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the boy’s
conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have
noted, to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it
would be nearer the truth to say that—without a word—he
himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge
absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose-
flush of his innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the
little horrid, unclean school-world, and he had paid a price
for it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such differences,
such superiorities of quality, always, on the part of the
majority—which could include even stupid, sordid head-
masters—turns infallibly to the vindictive.
Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only
fault, and it never made Miles a muff) that kept them—how
HENRY JAMES 33
shall I express it?—almost impersonal and certainly quite
unpunishable. They were like the cherubs of the anecdote,
who had—morally, at any rate—nothing to whack! I
remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as
it were, no history. We expect of a small child a scant one,
but there was in this beautiful little boy something
extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy, that,
more than in any creature of his age I have seen, struck me
as beginning anew each day. He had never for a second
suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really
been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have
“caught” it, and I should have caught it by the rebound—I
should have found the trace. I found nothing at all, and he
was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his school, never
mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was
quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was
under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the
time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it
was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I
was in receipt in these days of disturbing letters from home,
where things were not going well. But with my children,
what things in the world mattered? That was the question I
used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their
loveliness.
There was a Sunday—to get on—when it rained with
such force and for so many hours that there could be no
procession to church; in consequence of which, as the day
declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, should the
evening show improvement, we would attend together the
late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our
walk, which, through the park and by the good road to the
village, would be a matter of twenty minutes. Coming
downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a
34 THE TURN OF THE SCREW
pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that had
received them—with a publicity perhaps not edifying—
while I sat with the children at their tea, served on Sundays,
by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany and
brass, the “grown-up” dining-room. The gloves had been
dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. The day was
grey enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it
enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognise,
on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I
wanted, but to become aware of a person on the other side of
the window and looking straight in. One step into the room
had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there.
The person looking straight in was the person who had
already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won’t
say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a
nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse
and made me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold.
He was the same—he was the same, and seen, this time, as
he had been seen before, from the waist up, the window,
though the dining-room was on the ground-floor, not going
down to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to
the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely,
only to show me how intense the former had been. He
remained but a few seconds—long enough to convince me
he also saw and recognised; but it was as if I had been
looking at him for years and had known him always.
Something, however, happened this time that had not
happened before; his stare into my face, through the glass
and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it
quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it,
see it fix successively several other things. On the spot there
came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was not for
me he had come there. He had come for someone else.
HENRY JAMES 35
The flash of this knowledge—for it was knowledge in
the midst of dread—produced in me the most extraordinary
effect, started, as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty
and courage. I say courage because I was beyond all doubt
already far gone. I bounded straight out of the door again,
reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the drive,
and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a
corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing
now—my visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped,
with the real relief of this; but I took in the whole scene—I
gave him time to reappear. I call it time, but how long was
it? I can’t speak to the purpose today of the duration of these
things. That kind of measure must have left me: they
couldn’t have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last.
The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden
beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great
emptiness. There were shrubberies and big trees, but I
remember the clear assurance I felt that none of them
concealed him. He was there or was not there: not there if I
didn’t see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, instead
of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was
confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where
he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and
looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this
moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs.
Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from
the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of what
had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own
visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her
something of the shock that I had received. She turned white,
and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She
stared, in short, and retreated on just my lines, and I knew
she had then passed out and come round to me and that I
36 THE TURN OF THE SCREW
should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and
while I waited I thought of more things than one. But there’s
only one I take space to mention. I wondered why she should
be scared.
