BOOK THIRD
V
The two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss season, had been warnedthat their design was unconsidered, that the passes would not be clear,nor the air mild, nor the inns open--the two ladies who,characteristically, had braved a good deal of possibly interestedremonstrance were finding themselves, as their adventure turned out,wonderfully sustained. It was the judgment of the head-waiters andother functionaries on the Italian lakes that approved itself now asinterested; they themselves had been conscious of impatiences, ofbolder dreams--at least the younger had; so that one of the things theymade out together--making out as they did an endless variety--was thatin those operatic palaces of the Villa d'Este, of Cadenabbia, ofPallanza and Stresa, lone women, however reinforced by atravelling-library of instructive volumes, were apt to be beguiled andundone. Their flights of fancy moreover had been modest; they had forinstance risked nothing vital in hoping to make their way by theBruenig. They were making it in fact happily enough as we meet them, andwere only wishing that, for the wondrous beauty of the earlyhigh-climbing spring, it might have been longer and the places to pauseand rest more numerous.
Such at least had been the intimated attitude of Mrs. Stringham, theelder of the companions, who had her own view of the impatiences of theyounger, to which, however, she offered an opposition but of the mostcircuitous. She moved, the admirable Mrs. Stringham, in a fine cloud ofobservation and suspicion she was in the position, as she believed, ofknowing much more about Milly Theale than Milly herself knew, and yetof having to darken her knowledge as well as make it active. The womanin the world least formed by nature, as she was quite aware, forduplicities and labyrinths, she found herself dedicated to personalsubtlety by a new set of circumstances, above all by a new personalrelation had now in fact to recognise that an education in theoccult--she could scarce say what to call it--had begun for her the dayshe left New York with Mildred. She had come on from Boston for thatpurpose; had seen little of the girl--or rather had seen her butbriefly, for Mrs. Stringham, when she saw anything at all, saw much,saw everything--before accepting her proposal; and had accordinglyplaced herself, by her act, in a boat that she more and more estimatedas, humanly speaking, of the biggest, though likewise, no doubt, inmany ways, by reason of its size, of the safest. In Boston, the winterbefore, the young lady in whom we are interested had, on the spot,deeply, yet almost tacitly, appealed to her, dropped into her mind theshy conceit of some assistance, some devotion to render. Mrs.Stringham's little life had often been visited by shy conceits--secretdreams that had fluttered their hour between its narrow walls without,for any great part, so much as mustering courage to look out of itsrather dim windows. But this imagination--the fancy of a possible linkwith the remarkable young thing from New York--_had_ mustered courage:had perched, on the instant, at the clearest look-out it could find,and might be said to have remained there till, only a few months later,it had caught, in surprise and joy, the unmistakable flash of a signal.
Milly Theale had Boston friends, such as they were, and of recentmaking; and it was understood that her visit to them--a visit that wasnot to be meagre--had been undertaken, after a series of bereavements,in the interest of the particular peace that New York could not give.It was recognised, liberally enough, that there were manythings--perhaps even too many--New York _could_ give; but this was feltto make no difference in the constant fact that what you had most todo, under the discipline of life, or of death, was really to feel yoursituation as grave. Boston could help you to that as nothing elsecould, and it had extended to Milly, by every presumption, some suchmeasure of assistance. Mrs. Stringham was never to forget--for themoment had not faded, nor the infinitely fine vibration it set up inany degree ceased--her own first sight of the striking apparition, thenunheralded and unexplained: the slim, constantly pale, delicatelyhaggard, anomalously, agreeably angular young person, of not more thantwo-and-twenty in spite of her marks, whose hair was some howexceptionally red even for the real thing, which it innocentlyconfessed to being, and whose clothes were remarkably black even forrobes of mourning, which was the meaning they expressed. It was NewYork mourning, it was New York hair, it was a New York history,confused as yet, but multitudinous, of the loss of parents, brothers,sisters, almost every human appendage, all on a scale and with a sweepthat had required the greater stage; it was a New York legend ofaffecting, of romantic isolation, and, beyond everything, it was bymost accounts, in respect to the mass of money so piled on the girl'sback, a set of New York possibilities. She was alone, she was stricken,she was rich, and, in particular, she was strange--a combination initself of a nature to engage Mrs. Stringham's attention. But it was thestrangeness that most determined our good lady's sympathy, convinced asshe was that it was much greater than any one else--any one but thesole Susan Stringham--supposed. Susan privately settled it that Bostonwas not in the least seeing her, was only occupied with her seeingBoston, and that any assumed affinity between the two characters wasdelusive and vain. She was seeing her, and she had quite the deepestmoment of her life in now obeying the instinct to conceal the vision.She couldn't explain it--no one would understand. They would say cleverBoston things--Mrs. Stringham was from Burlington, Vermont, which sheboldly upheld as the real heart of New England, Boston being "too farsouth"--but they would only darken counsel.
There could be no better proof, than this quick intellectual split, ofthe impression made on our friend, who shone, herself, she was wellaware, with but the reflected light of the admirable city. She too hadhad her discipline, but it had not made her striking; it had beenprosaically usual, though doubtless a decent dose; and had only madeher usual to match it--usual, that is, as Boston went. She had lostfirst her husband, and then her mother, with whom, on her husband'sdeath, she had lived again; so that now, childless, she was but moresharply single than before. But she sat rather coldly light, having, asshe called it, enough to live on--so far, that is, as she lived bybread alone: how little indeed she was regularly content with that dietappeared from the name she had made--Susan Shepherd Stringham--as acontributor to the best magazines. She wrote short stories, and shefondly believed she had her "note," the art of showing New Englandwithout showing it wholly in the kitchen. She had not herself beenbrought up in the kitchen; she knew others who had not; and to speakfor them had thus become with her a literary mission. To _be_ in truthliterary had ever been her dearest thought, the thought that kept herbright little nippers perpetually in position. There were masters,models, celebrities, mainly foreign, whom she finely accounted so andin whose light she ingeniously laboured; there were others whom,however chattered about, she ranked with the inane, for she was full ofdiscrimination but all categories failed her--they ceased at least tosignify--as soon as she found herself in presence of the real thing,the romantic life itself. That was what she saw in Mildred--whatpositively made her hand a while tremble too much for the pen. She hadhad, it seemed to her, a revelation--such as even New England refinedand grammatical couldn't give; and, all made up as she was of smallneat memories and ingenuities, little industries and ambitions, mixedwith something moral, personal, that was still more intenselyresponsive, she felt her new friend would have done her an ill turn iftheir friendship shouldn't develop, and yet that nothing would be leftof anything else if it should. It was for the surrender of everythingelse that she was, however, quite prepared, and while she went abouther usual Boston business with her usual Boston probity she was reallyall the while holding herself. She wore her "handsome" felt hat, soTyrolese, yet some how, though feathered from the eagle's wing, sotruly domestic, with the same straightness and security; she attachedher fur boa with the same honest precautions; she preserved her balanceon the ice-slopes with the same practised skill; she opened, eachevening, her "Transcript" with the same interfusion of suspense andresignation she attended her almost daily concert with the sameexpenditure of patience and the same economy of passion she flitted inand out of the Public Library with the air of conscientiously returningor brave
ly carrying off in her pocket the key of knowledge itself; andfinally--it was what she most did--she watched the thin trickle of afictive "love-interest" through that somewhat serpentine channel, inthe magazines, which she mainly managed to keep clear for it. But thereal thing, all the while, was elsewhere; the real thing had gone backto New York, leaving behind it the two unsolved questions, quitedistinct, of why it _was_ real, and whether she should ever be so nearit again.
For the figure to which these questions attached themselves she hadfound a convenient description--she thought of it for herself, always,as that of a girl with a background. The great reality was in the factthat, very soon, after but two or three meetings, the girl with thebackground, the girl with the crown of old gold and the mourning thatwas not as the mourning of Boston, but at once more rebellious in itsgloom and more frivolous in its frills, had told her she had never seenany one like her. They had met thus as opposed curiosities, and thatsimple remark of Milly's--if simple it was--became the most importantthing that had ever happened to her; it deprived the love-interest, forthe time, of actuality and even of pertinence; it moved her first, inshort, in a high degree, to gratitude, and then to no small compassion.Yet in respect to this relation at least it was what did prove the keyof knowledge; it lighted up as nothing else could do the poor youngwoman's history. That the potential heiress of all the ages shouldnever have seen any one like a mere typical subscriber, after all, tothe "Transcript" was a truth that--in especial as announced withmodesty, with humility, with regret--described a situation. It laidupon the elder woman, as to the void to be filled, a weight ofresponsibility; but in particular it led her to ask whom poor Mildred_had_ then seen, and what range of contacts it had taken to producesuch queer surprises. That was really the inquiry that had ended byclearing the air: the key of knowledge was felt to click in the lockfrom the moment it flashed upon Mrs. Stringham that her friend had beenstarved for culture. Culture was what she herself represented for her,and it was living up to that principle that would surely prove thegreat business. She knew, the clever lady, what the principle itselfrepresented, and the limits of her own store; and a certain alarm wouldhave grown upon her if something else hadn't grown faster.
This was, fortunately for her--and we give it in her own words--thesense of a harrowing pathos. That, primarily, was what appealed to her,what seemed to open the door of romance for her still wider than any,than a still more reckless, connection with the "picture-papers." Forsuch was essentially the point: it was rich, romantic, abysmal, tohave, as was evident, thousands and thousands a year, to have youth andintelligence and if not beauty, at least, in equal measure, a high,dim, charming, ambiguous oddity, which was even better, and then on topof all to enjoy boundless freedom, the freedom of the wind in thedesert--it was unspeakably touching to be so equipped and yet to havebeen reduced by fortune to little humble-minded mistakes.
It brought our friend's imagination back again to New York, whereaberrations were so possible in the intellectual sphere, and it in factcaused a visit she presently paid there to overflow with interest. AsMilly had beautifully invited her, so she would hold out if she couldagainst the strain of so much confidence in her mind; and theremarkable thing was that even at the end of three weeks she _had_ heldout. But by this time her mind had grown comparatively bold and free;it was dealing with new quantities, a different proportionaltogether--and that had made for refreshment: she had accordingly gonehome in convenient possession of her subject. New York was vast, NewYork was startling, with strange histories, with wild cosmopolitebackward generations that accounted for anything; and to have gotnearer the luxuriant tribe of which the rare creature was the finalflower, the immense, extravagant, unregulated cluster, with free-livingancestors, handsome dead cousins, lurid uncles, beautiful vanishedaunts, persons all busts and curls, preserved, though so exposed, inthe marble of famous French chisels--all this, to say nothing of theeffect of closer growths of the stem, was to have had one's smallworld-space both crowded and enlarged. Our couple had at all eventseffected an exchange; the elder friend had been as consciouslyintellectual as possible, and the younger, abounding in personalrevelation, had been as unconsciously distinguished. This waspoetry--it was also history--Mrs. Stringham thought, to a finer tuneeven than Maeterlink and Pater, than Marbot and Gregorovius. Sheappointed occasions for the reading of these authors with her hostess,rather perhaps than actually achieved great spans; but what theymanaged and what they missed speedily sank for her into the dim depthsof the merely relative, so quickly, so strongly had she clutched hercentral clue. All her scruples and hesitations, all her anxiousenthusiasms, had reduced themselves to a single alarm--the fear thatshe really might act on her companion clumsily and coarsely. She waspositively afraid of what she might do to her, and to avoid that, toavoid it with piety and passion, to do, rather, nothing at all, toleave her untouched because no touch one could apply, however light,however just, however earnest and anxious, would be half good enough,would be anything but an ugly smutch upon perfection--this now imposeditself as a consistent, an inspiring thought.
Less than a month after the event that had so determined Mrs.Stringham's attitude--close upon the heels, that is, of her return fromNew York--she was reached by a proposal that brought up for her thekind of question her delicacy might have to contend with. Would shestart for Europe with her young friend at the earliest possible date,and should she be willing to do so without making conditions? Theinquiry was launched by wire; explanations, in sufficiency, werepromised; extreme urgency was suggested, and a general surrenderinvited. It was to the honour of her sincerity that she made thesurrender on the spot, though it was not perhaps altogether to that ofher logic. She had wanted, very consciously, from the first, to givesomething up for her new acquaintance, but she had now no doubt thatshe was practically giving up all. What settled this was the fulness ofa particular impression, the impression that had throughout more andmore supported her and which she would have uttered so far as she mightby saying that the charm of the creature was positively in thecreature's greatness. She would have been content so to leave it;unless indeed she had said, more familiarly, that Mildred was thebiggest impression of her life. That was at all events the biggestaccount of her, and none but a big, clearly, would do. Her situation,as such things were called, was on the grand scale; but it still wasnot that. It was her nature, once for all--a nature that reminded Mrs.Stringham of the term always used in the newspapers about the great newsteamers, the inordinate number of "feet of water" they drew; so thatif, in your little boat, you had chosen to hover and approach, you hadbut yourself to thank, when once motion was started, for the way thedraught pulled you. Milly drew the feet of water, and odd though itmight seem that a lonely girl, who was not robust and who hated soundand show, should stir the stream like a leviathan, her companionfloated off with the sense of rocking violently at her side. More thanprepared, however, for that excitement, Mrs. Stringham mainly failed ofease in respect to her own consistency. To attach herself for anindefinite time seemed a roundabout way of holding her hands off. Ifshe wished to be sure of neither touching nor smutching, the straighterplan would doubtless have been not to keep her friend within reach.This in fact she fully recognised, and with it the degree to which shedesired that the girl should lead her life, a life certain to be somuch finer than that of anybody else. The difficulty, however, by goodfortune, cleared away as soon as she had further recognised, as she wasspeedily able to do, that she, Susan Shepherd--the name with whichMilly for the most part amused herself--was _not_ anybody else. She hadrenounced that character; she had now no life to lead; and she honestlybelieved that she was thus supremely equipped for leading Milly's own.No other person whatever, she was sure, had to an equal degree thisqualification, and it was really to assert it that she fondly embarked.
Many things, though not in many weeks, had come and gone since then,and one of the best of them, doubtless, had been the voyage itself, bythe happy southern course, to the succession of Mediterranean p
orts,with the dazzled wind-up at Naples. Two or three others had precededthis; incidents, indeed rather lively marks, of their last fortnight athome, and one of which had determined on Mrs. Stringham's part a rushto New York, forty-eight breathless hours there, previous to her finalrally. But the great sustained sea-light had drunk up the rest of thepicture, so that for many days other questions and other possibilitiessounded with as little effect as a trio of penny whistles might soundin a Wagner overture. It was the Wagner overture that practicallyprevailed, up through Italy, where Milly had already been, stillfurther up and across the Alps, which were also partly known to Mrs.Stringham; only perhaps "taken" to a time not wholly congruous, hurriedin fact on account of the girl's high restlessness. She had beenexpected, she had frankly promised, to be restless--that was partly whyshe was "great"--or was a consequence, at any rate, if not a cause; yetshe had not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining so hardat the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful to Mrs. Stringham thatshe had arrears to make up, the chances that had lapsed for her throughthe wanton ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its highersides, and fond almost of nothing else; but the vagueness, theopenness, the eagerness without point and the interest withoutpause--all a part of the charm of her oddity as at first presented--hadbecome more striking in proportion as they triumphed over movement andchange. She had arts and idiosyncrasies of which no great account couldhave been given, but which were a daily grace if you lived with them;such as the art of being almost tragically impatient and yet making itas light as air; of being inexplicably sad and yet making it as clearas noon of being unmistakably gay, and yet making it as soft as dusk.Mrs. Stringham by this time understood everything, was more than everconfirmed in wonder and admiration, in her view that it was life enoughsimply to feel her companion's feelings; but there were special keysshe had not yet added to her bunch, impressions that, of a sudden, wereapt to affect her as new.
This particular day on the great Swiss road had been, for some reason,full of them, and they referred themselves, provisionally, to somedeeper depth than she had touched--though into two or three suchdepths, it must be added, she had peeped long enough to find herselfsuddenly draw back. It was not Milly's unpacified state, in short, thatnow troubled her--though certainly, as Europe was the great Americansedative, the failure was to some extent to be noted: it was thesuspected presence of something behind it--which, however, couldscarcely have taken its place there since their departure. What anyfresh motive of unrest could suddenly have sprung from was, in short,not to be divined. It was but half an explanation to say thatexcitement, for each of them, had naturally dropped, and that what theyhad left behind, or tried to--the great serious facts of life, as Mrs.Stringham liked to call them--was once more coming into sight asobjects loom through smoke when smoke begins to clear; for these weregeneral appearances from which the girl's own aspect, her really largervagueness, seemed rather to disconnect itself. The nearest approach toa personal anxiety indulged in as yet by the elder lady was on hertaking occasion to wonder if what she had more than anything else gothold of mightn't be one of the finer, one of the finest, one of therarest--as she called it so that she might call it nothing worse--casesof American intensity. She had just had a moment of alarm--askedherself if her young friend were merely going to treat her to somecomplicated drama of nerves. At the end of a week, however, with theirfurther progress, her young friend had effectively answered thequestion and given her the impression, indistinct indeed as yet, ofsomething that had a reality compared with which the nervousexplanation would have been coarse. Mrs. Stringham found herself fromthat hour, in other words, in presence of an explanation that remaineda muffled and intangible form, but that, assuredly, should it take onsharpness, would explain everything and more than everything, wouldbecome instantly the light in which Milly was to be read.
Such a matter as this may at all events speak of the style in which ouryoung woman could affect those who were near her, may testify to thesort of interest she could inspire. She worked--and seemingly quitewithout design--upon the sympathy, the curiosity, the fancy of herassociates, and we shall really ourselves scarce otherwise come closerto her than by feeling their impression and sharing, if need be, theirconfusion. She reduced them, Mrs. Stringham would have said, reducedthem to a consenting bewilderment; which was precisely, for that goodlady, on a last analysis, what was most in harmony with her greatness.She exceeded, escaped measure, was surprising only because _they_ wereso far from great. Thus it was that on this wondrous day on the Bruenigthe spell of watching her had grown more than ever irresistible; aproof of what--or of a part of what--Mrs. Stringham had, with all therest, been reduced to. She had almost the sense of tracking her youngfriend as if at a given moment to pounce. She knew she shouldn'tpounce, she hadn't come out to pounce; yet she felt her attentionsecretive, all the same, and her observation scientific. She struckherself as hovering like a spy, applying tests, laying traps,concealing signs. This would last, however, only till she should fairlyknow what was the matter; and to watch was, after all, meanwhile, a wayof clinging to the girl, not less than an occupation, a satisfaction initself. The pleasure of watching, moreover, if a reason were needed,came from a sense of her beauty. Her beauty hadn't at all originallyseemed a part of the situation, and Mrs. Stringham had, even in thefirst flush of friendship, not named it, grossly, to any one; havingseen early that, for stupid people--and who, she sometimes secretlyasked herself, wasn't stupid?--it would take a great deal ofexplaining. She had learned not to mention it till it was mentionedfirst--which occasionally happened, but not too often; and then she wasthere in force. Then she both warmed to the perception that met her ownperception, and disputed it, suspiciously, as to special items; while,in general, she had learned to refine even to the point of herselfemploying the word that most people employed. She employed it topretend that she was also stupid and so have done with the matter;spoke of her friend as plain, as ugly even, in a case of especiallydense insistence; but as, in appearance, so "awfully full of things."This was her own way of describing a face that, thanks, doubtless, torather too much forehead, too much nose and too much mouth, togetherwith too little mere conventional colour and conventional line, wasexpressive, irregular, exquisite, both for speech and for silence. WhenMilly smiled it was a public event--when she didn't it was a chapter ofhistory. They had stopped, on the Bruenig, for luncheon, and there hadcome up for them under the charm of the place the question of a longerstay.
Mrs. Stringham was now on the ground of thrilled recognitions, smallsharp echoes of a past which she kept in a well-thumbed case, butwhich, on pressure of a spring and exposure to the air, still showeditself ticking as hard as an honest old watch. The embalmed "Europe" ofher younger time had partly stood for three years of Switzerland, aterm of continuous school at Vevey, with rewards of merit in the formof silver medals tied by blue ribbons and mild mountain-passes attackedwith alpenstocks. It was the good girls who, in the holidays, weretaken highest, and our friend could now judge, from what she supposedher familiarity with the minor peaks, that she had been one of thebest. These reminiscences, sacred to-day because prepared in the hushedchambers of the past, had been part of the general train laid for thepair of sisters, daughters early fatherless, by their brave Vermontmother, who struck her at present as having apparently, almost likeColumbus, worked out, all unassisted, a conception of the other side ofthe globe. She had focussed Vevey, by the light of nature, and withextraordinary completeness, at Burlington after which she hadembarked, sailed, landed, explored and, above all, made good herpresence. She had given her daughters the five years in Switzerland andGermany that were to leave them ever afterwards a standard ofcomparison for all cycles of Cathay, and to stamp the younger inespecial--Susan was the younger--with a character that, as Mrs.Stringham had often had occasion, through life, to say to herself, madeall the difference. It made all the difference for Mrs. Stringham, overand over again and in the most remote connections, that, thanks to herparent's lonely, t
hrifty, hardy faith, she was a woman of the world.There were plenty of women who were all sorts of things that shewasn't, but who, on the other hand, were not that, and who didn't know_she_ was (which she liked--it relegated them still further) and didn'tknow, either, how it enabled her to judge them. She had never seenherself so much in this light as during the actual phase of herassociated, if slightly undirected, pilgrimage; and the consciousnessgave perhaps to her plea for a pause more intensity than she knew. Theirrecoverable days had come back to her from far off; they were part ofthe sense of the cool upper air and of everything else that hung likean indestructible scent to the torn garment of youth--the taste ofhoney and the luxury of milk, the sound of cattle-bells and the rush ofstreams, the fragrance of trodden balms and the dizziness of deepgorges.
Milly clearly felt these things too, but they affected her companion atmoments--that was quite the way Mrs. Stringham would have expressedit--as the princess in a conventional tragedy might have affected theconfidant if a personal emotion had ever been permitted to the latter.That a princess could only be a princess was a truth with which,essentially, a confidant, however responsive, had to live. Mrs.Stringham was a woman of the world, but Milly Theale was a princess,the only one she had yet had to deal with, and this in its way, too,made all the difference. It was a perfectly definite doom for thewearer--it was for every one else a perfectly palpable quality. Itmight have been, possibly, with its involved loneliness and othermysteries, the weight under which she fancied her companion's admirablehead occasionally, and ever so submissively, bowed. Milly had quiteassented at luncheon to their staying over, and had left her to look atrooms, settle questions, arrange about their keeping on their carriageand horses; cares that had now moreover fallen to Mrs. Stringham as amatter of course and that yet for some reason, on this occasionparticularly, brought home to her--all agreeably, richly, almostgrandly--what it was to live with the great. Her young friend had, in asublime degree, a sense closed to the general question of difficulty,which she got rid of, furthermore, not in the least as one had seenmany charming persons do, by merely passing it on to others. She keptit completely at a distance: it never entered the circle; the mostplaintive confidant couldn't have dragged it in; and to tread the pathof a confidant was accordingly to live exempt. Service was in otherwords so easy to render that the whole thing was like court lifewithout the hardships. It came back of course to the question of money,and our observant lady had by this time repeatedly reflected that ifone were talking of the "difference," it was just this, thisincomparably and nothing else, that when all was said and done mostmade it. A less vulgarly, a less obviously purchasing or paradingperson she couldn't have imagined; but it was, all the same, the truthof truths that the girl couldn't get away from her wealth. She mightleave her conscientious companion as freely alone with it as possibleand never ask a question, scarce even tolerate a reference; but it wasin the fine folds of the helplessly expensive little black frock thatshe drew over the grass as she now strolled vaguely off; it was in thecurious and splendid coils of hair, "done" with no eye whatever to the_mode du jour,_ that peeped from under the corresponding indifferenceof her hat, the merely personal tradition that suggested a sort ofnoble inelegance; it lurked between the leaves of the uncut butantiquated Tauchnitz volume of which, before going out, she hadmechanically possessed herself. She couldn't dress it away, nor walk itaway, nor read it away, nor think it away; she could neither smile itaway in any dreamy absence nor blow it away in any softened sigh. Shecouldn't have lost it if she had tried--that was what it was to bereally rich. It had to be _the_ thing you were. When at the end of anhour she had not returned to the house Mrs. Stringham, though thebright afternoon was yet young, took, with precautions, the samedirection, went to join her in case of her caring for a walk. But thepurpose of joining her was in truth less distinct than that of a dueregard for a possibly preferred detachment: so that, once more, thegood lady proceeded with a quietness that made her slightly "underhand"even in her own eyes. She couldn't help that, however, and she didn'tcare, sure as she was that what she really wanted was not to overstep,but to stop in time. It was to be able to stop in time that she wentsoftly, but she had on this occasion further to go than ever yet, forshe followed in vain, and at last with some anxiety, the footpath shebelieved Milly to have taken. It wound up a hillside and into thehigher Alpine meadows in which, all these last days, they had so oftenwanted, as they passed above or below, to stray; and then it obscureditself in a wood, but always going up, up, and with a small cluster ofbrown old high-perched chalets evidently for its goal. Mrs. Stringhamreached in due course the chalets, and there received from a bewilderedold woman, a very fearful person to behold, an indication thatsufficiently guided her. The young lady had been seen not long beforepassing further on, over a crest and to a place where the way woulddrop again, as our unappeased inquirer found it, in fact, a quarter ofan hour later, markedly and almost alarmingly to do. It led somewhere,yet apparently quite into space, for the great side of the mountainappeared, from where she pulled up, to fall away altogether, thoughprobably but to some issue below and out of sight. Her uncertaintymoreover was brief, for she next became aware of the presence on afragment of rock, twenty yards off, of the Tauchnitz volume that thegirl had brought out, and that therefore pointed to her shortlyprevious passage. She had rid herself of the book, which was anencumbrance, and meant of course to pick it up on her return; but asshe hadn't yet picked it up what on earth had become of her? Mrs.Stringham, I hasten to add, was within a few moments to see; but it wasquite an accident that she had not, before they were over, betrayed byher deeper agitation the fact of her own nearness.
The whole place, with the descent of the path and as a sequel to asharp turn that was masked by rocks and shrubs, appeared to fallprecipitously and to become a "view" pure and simple, a view of greatextent and beauty, but thrown forward and vertiginous. Milly, with thepromise of it from just above, had gone straight down to it, notstopping till it was all before her; and here, on what struck herfriend as the dizzy edge of it, she was seated at her ease. The pathsomehow took care of itself and its final business, but the girl's seatwas a slab of rock at the end of a short promontory or excrescence thatmerely pointed off to the right into gulfs of air and that was soplaced by good fortune, if not by the worst, as to be at lastcompletely visible. For Mrs. Stringham stifled a cry on taking in whatshe believed to be the danger of such a perch for a mere maiden; herliability to slip, to slide, to leap, to be precipitated by a singlefalse movement, by a turn of the head--how could one tell? intowhatever was beneath. A thousand thoughts, for the minute, roared inthe poor lady's ears, but without reaching, as happened, Milly's. Itwas a commotion that left our observer intensely still and holding herbreath. What had first been offered her was the possibility of a latentintention--however wild the idea--in such a posture; of some betrayedaccordance of Milly's caprice with a horrible hidden obsession. Butsince Mrs. Stringham stood as motionless as if a sound, a syllable,must have produced the start that would be fatal, so even the lapse ofa few seconds had a partly reassuring effect. It gave her time toreceive the impression which, when she some minutes later softlyretraced her steps, was to be the sharpest she carried away. This wasthe impression that if the girl was deeply and recklessly meditatingthere, she was not meditating a jump; she was on the contrary, as shesat, much more in a state of uplifted and unlimited possession that hadnothing to gain from violence. She was looking down on the kingdoms ofthe earth, and though indeed that of itself might well go to the brain,it wouldn't be with a view of renouncing them. Was she choosing amongthem, or did she want them all? This question, before Mrs. Stringhamhad decided what to do, made others vain; in accordance with which shesaw, or believed she did, that if it might be dangerous to call out, tosound in any way a surprise, it would probably be safe enough towithdraw as she had come. She watched a while longer, she held herbreath, and she never knew afterwards what time had elapsed.
Not many minutes probably, yet they had
not seemed few, and they hadgiven her so much to think of, not only while creeping home, but whilewaiting afterwards at the inn, that she was still busy with them when,late in the afternoon, Milly reappeared. She had stopped at the pointof the path where the Tauchnitz lay, had taken it up and, with thepencil attached to her watch-guard, had scrawled a word--_abientot!_--across the cover; then, even under the girl's continueddelay, had measured time without a return of alarm. For she now sawthat the great thing she had brought away was precisely a convictionthat the future was not to exist for her princess in the form of anysharp or simple release from the human predicament. It wouldn't be forher a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick escape. It wouldbe a question of taking full in the face the whole assault of life, tothe general muster of which indeed her face might have been directlypresented as she sat there on her rock. Mrs. Stringham was thus able tosay to herself, even after another interval of some length, that if heryoung friend still continued absent it wouldn't be because--whateverthe opportunity--she had cut short the thread. She wouldn't havecommitted suicide; she knew herself unmistakably reserved for some morecomplicated passage; this was the very vision in which she had, with nolittle awe, been discovered. The image that thus remained with theelder lady kept the character of revelation. During the breathlessminutes of her watch she had seen her companion afresh; the latter'stype, aspect, marks, her history, her state, her beauty, her mystery,all unconsciously betrayed themselves to the Alpine air, and all hadbeen gathered in again to feed Mrs. Stringham's flame. They are thingsthat will more distinctly appear for us, and they are meanwhile brieflyrepresented by the enthusiasm that was stronger on our friend's partthan any doubt. It was a consciousness she was scarce yet used tocarrying, but she had as beneath her feet a mine of something precious.She seemed to herself to stand near the mouth, not yet quite cleared.The mine but needed working and would certainly yield a treasure. Shewas not thinking, either, of Milly's gold.
VI
The girl said nothing, when they met, about the words scrawled on theTauchnitz, and Mrs. Stringham then noticed that she had not the bookwith her. She had left it lying and probably would never remember it atall. Her comrade's decision was therefore quickly made not to speak ofhaving followed her; and within five minutes of her return, wonderfullyenough, the preoccupation denoted by her forgetfulness further declareditself. "Should you think me quite abominable if I were to say thatafter all----?"
Mrs. Stringham had already thought, with the first sound of thequestion, everything she was capable of thinking, and had immediatelymade such a sign that Milly's words gave place to visible relief at herassent. "You don't care for our stop here--you'd rather go straight on?We'll start then with the peep of to-morrow's dawn--or as early as youlike; it's only rather late now to take the road again." And she smiledto show how she meant it for a joke that an instant onward rush waswhat the girl would have wished. "I bullied you into stopping," sheadded; "so it serves me right."
Milly made in general the most of her good friend's jokes; but shehumoured this one a little absently. "Oh yes, you do bully me." And itwas thus arranged between them, with no discussion at all, that theywould resume their journey in the morning. The younger tourist'sinterest in the detail of the matter--in spite of a declaration fromthe elder that she would consent to be dragged anywhere--appearedalmost immediately afterwards quite to lose itself; she promised,however, to think till supper of where, with the world all before them,they might go--supper having been ordered for such time as permitted oflighted candles. It had been agreed between them that lighted candlesat wayside inns, in strange countries, amid mountain scenery, gave theevening meal a peculiar poetry--such being the mild adventures, therefinements of impression, that they, as they would have said, went infor. It was now as if, before this repast, Milly had designed to "liedown"; but at the end of three minutes more she was not lying down, shewas saying instead, abruptly, with a transition that was like a jump offour thousand miles: "What was it that, in New York, on the ninth, whenyou saw him alone, Dr. Finch said to you?"
It was not till later that Mrs. Stringham fully knew why the questionhad startled her still more than its suddenness explained; though theeffect of it even at the moment was almost to frighten her into a falseanswer. She had to think, to remember the occasion, the "ninth," in NewYork, the time she had seen Dr. Finch alone, and to recall what he hadthen said to her; and when everything had come back it was quite, atfirst, for a moment, as if he had said something that immenselymattered. He hadn't, however, in fact; it was only as if he mightperhaps after all have been going to. It was on the sixth--within tendays of their sailing--that she had hurried from Boston under thealarm, a small but a sufficient shock, of hearing that Mildred hadsuddenly been taken ill, had had, from some obscure cause, such anupset as threatened to stay their journey. The bearing of the accidenthad happily soon announced itself as slight, and there had been, in theevent, but a few hours of anxiety; the journey had been pronouncedagain not only possible, but, as representing "change," highlyadvisable; and if the zealous guest had had five minutes by herselfwith the doctor, that was, clearly, no more at his instance than at herown. Almost nothing had passed between them but an easy exchange ofenthusiasms in respect to the remedial properties of "Europe"; and thisassurance, as the facts came back to her, she was now able to give."Nothing whatever, on my word of honour, that you mayn't know ormightn't then have known. I've no secret with him about you. What makesyou suspect it? I don't quite make out how you know I did see himalone."
"No--you never told me," said Milly. "And I don't mean," she went on,"during the twenty-four hours while I was bad, when your putting yourheads together was natural enough. I mean after I was better--the lastthing before you went home."
Mrs. Stringham continued to wonder. "Who told you I saw him then?"
_"He_ didn't himself--nor did you write me it afterwards. We speak ofit now for the first time. That's exactly why!" Milly declared--withsomething in her face and voice that, the next moment, betrayed for hercompanion that she had really known nothing, had only conjectured and,chancing her charge, made a hit. Yet why had her mind been busy withthe question? "But if you're not, as you now assure me, in hisconfidence," she smiled, "it's no matter."
"I'm not in his confidence, and he had nothing to confide. But are youfeeling unwell?"
The elder woman was earnest for the truth, though the possibility shenamed was not at all the one that seemed to fit--witness the long climbMilly had just indulged in. The girl showed her constant white face,but that her friends had all learned to discount, and it was oftenbrightest when superficially not bravest. She continued for a littlemysteriously to smile. "I don't know--haven't really the least idea.But it might be well to find out."
Mrs. Stringham, at this, flared into sympathy. "Are you in trouble--inpain?"
"Not the least little bit. But I sometimes wonder----!"
"Yes"--she pressed: "wonder what?"
"Well, if I shall have much of it."
Mrs. Stringham stared. "Much of what? Not of pain?"
"Of everything. Of everything I have."
Anxiously again, tenderly, our friend cast about. "You 'have'everything; so that when you say 'much' of it----"
"I only mean," the girl broke in, "shall I have it for long? That is ifI _have_ got it."
She had at present the effect, a little, of confounding, or at least ofperplexing her comrade, who was touched, who was always touched, bysomething helpless in her grace and abrupt in her turns, and yetactually half made out in her a sort of mocking light. "If you've gotan ailment?"
"If I've got everything," Milly laughed.
"Ah, _that_--like almost nobody else."
"Then for how long?"
Mrs. Stringham's eyes entreated her; she had gone close to her, halfenclosed her with urgent arms. "Do you want to see some one?" And thenas the girl only met it with a slow headshake, though looking perhaps ashade more conscious: "We'll go straight to the best near doctor." T
histoo, however, produced but a gaze of qualified assent and a silence,sweet and vague, that left everything open. Our friend decidedly lostherself. "Tell me, for God's sake, if you're in distress."
"I don't think I've really _everything,"_ Milly said as if toexplain--and as if also to put it pleasantly.
"But what on earth can I do for you?" The girl hesitated, then seemedon the point of being able to say; but suddenly changed and expressedherself otherwise. "Dear, dear thing--I'm only too happy!"
It brought them closer, but it rather confirmed Mrs. Stringham's doubt."Then what's the matter?"
"That's the matter--that I can scarcely bear it."
"But what is it you think you haven't got?"
Milly waited another moment; then she found it, and found for it a dimshow of joy. "The power to resist the bliss of what I _have!"_
Mrs. Stringham took it in--her sense of being "put off" with it, thepossible, probable irony of it--and her tenderness renewed itself inthe positive grimness of a long murmur. "Whom will you see?"--for itwas as if they looked down from their height at a continent of doctors."Where will you first go?"
Milly had for the third time her air of consideration but she cameback with it to her plea of some minutes before. "I'll tell you atsupper--good-bye till then." And she left the room with a lightnessthat testified for her companion to something that again particularlypleased her in the renewed promise of motion. The odd passage justconcluded, Mrs. Stringham mused as she once more sat alone with ahooked needle and a ball of silk, the "fine" work with which she wasalways provided--this mystifying mood had simply been precipitated, nodoubt, by their prolonged halt, with which the girl hadn't really beenin sympathy. One had only to admit that her complaint was in fact butthe excess of the joy of life, and everything _did_ then fit. Shecouldn't stop for the joy, but she could go on for it, and with thesense of going on she floated again, was restored to her great spaces.There was no evasion of any truth--so at least Susan Shepherd hoped--inone's sitting there while the twilight deepened and feeling still morefinely that the position of this young lady was magnificent. Theevening at that height had naturally turned to cold, and the travellershad bespoken a fire with their meal; the great Alpine road asserted itsbrave presence through the small panes of the low, clean windows, withincidents at the inn-door, the yellow _diligence,_ the great waggons,the hurrying, hooded, private conveyances, reminders, for our fancifulfriend, of old stories, old pictures, historic flights, escapes,pursuits, things that had happened, things indeed that by a sort ofstrange congruity helped her to read the meanings of the greatestinterest into the relation in which she was now so deeply involved. Itwas natural that this record of the magnificence of her companion'sposition should strike her as, after all, the best meaning she couldextract; for she herself was seated in the magnificence as in acourt-carriage--she came back to that, and such a method ofprogression, such a view from crimson cushions, would evidently have agreat deal more to give. By the time the candles were lighted forsupper and the short, white curtains were drawn, Milly had reappeared,and the little scenic room had then all its romance. That charmmoreover was far from broken by the words in which she, without furtherloss of time, satisfied her patient mate. "I want to go straight toLondon."
It was unexpected, corresponding with no view positively taken at theirdeparture; when England had appeared, on the contrary, rather relegatedand postponed--seen for the moment, as who should say, at the end of anavenue of preparations and introductions. London, in short, might havebeen supposed to be the crown, and to be achieved like a siege bygradual approaches. Milly's actual fine stride was therefore the moreexciting, as any simplification almost always was to Mrs. Stringham;who, besides, was afterwards to recall as the very beginning of a dramathe terms in which, between their smoky candles, the girl had put herpreference and in which still other things had come up, come while theclank of waggon-chains in the sharp air reached their ears, with thestamp of hoofs, the rattle of buckets and the foreign questions,foreign answers, that were all alike a part of the cheery converse ofthe road. The girl brought it out in truth as she might have brought ahuge confession, something she admitted herself shy about and thatwould seem to show her as frivolous; it had rolled over her that whatshe wanted of Europe was "people," so far as they were to be had, andthat if her friend really wished to know, the vision of this sameequivocal quantity was what had haunted her during their previous days,in museums and churches, and what was again spoiling for her the puretaste of scenery. She was all for scenery--yes; but she wanted it humanand personal, and all she could say was that there would be inLondon--wouldn't there? more of that kind than anywhere else. She cameback to her idea that if it wasn't for long--if nothing should happento be so for _her_--why, the particular thing she spoke of wouldprobably have most to give her in the time, would probably be less thananything else a waste of her remainder. She produced this lastconsideration indeed with such gaiety that Mrs. Stringham was not againdisconcerted by it, was in fact quite ready--if talk of early dying wasin order--to match it from her own future. Good, then; they would, eatand drink because of what might happen to-morrow; and they would directtheir course from that moment with a view to such eating and drinking.They ate and drank that night, in truth, as if in the spirit of thisdecision whereby the air, before they separated, felt itself theclearer.
It had cleared perhaps to a view only too extensive--extensive, thatis, in proportion to the signs of life presented. The idea of "people"was not so entertained on Milly's part as to connect itself withparticular persons, and the fact remained for each of the ladies thatthey would, completely unknown, disembark at Dover amid the completelyunknowing. They had no relation already formed; this plea Mrs.Stringham put forward to see what it would produce. It produced nothingat first but the observation on the girl's side that what she had inmind was no thought of society nor of scraping acquaintance; nothingwas further from her than to desire the opportunities represented forthe compatriot in general by a trunkful of "letters." It wasn't aquestion, in short, of the people the compatriot was after; it was thehuman, the English picture itself, as they might see it in their ownway--the world imagined always in what one had read and dreamed. Mrs.Stringham did every justice to this world, but when later on anoccasion chanced to present itself, she made a point of not omitting toremark that it might be a comfort to know in advance even anindividual. This still, however, failed in vulgar parlance, to "fetch"Milly, so that she had presently to go all the way. "Haven't Iunderstood from you, for that matter, that you gave Mr. Denshersomething of a promise?"
There was a moment, on this, when Milly's look had to be taken asrepresenting one of two things--either that she was completely vagueabout the promise or that Mr. Densher's name itself started no train.But she really couldn't be so vague about the promise, herinterlocutress quickly saw, without attaching it to something; it hadto be a promise to somebody in particular to be so repudiated. In theevent, accordingly, she acknowledged Mr. Merton Densher, the sounusually clever young Englishman who had made his appearance in NewYork on some special literary business--wasn't it?--shortly beforetheir departure, and who had been three or four times in her houseduring the brief period between her visit to Boston and her companion'ssubsequent stay with her; but she required much reminding before itcame back to her that she had mentioned to this companion justafterwards the confidence expressed by the personage in question in hernever doing so dire a thing as to come to London without, as the phrasewas, looking a fellow up. She had left him the enjoyment of hisconfidence, the form of which might have appeared a trifle free--thatshe now reasserted; she had done nothing either to impair or to enhanceit; but she had also left Mrs. Stringham, in the connection and at thetime, rather sorry to have missed Mr. Densher. She had thought of himagain after that, the elder woman; she had likewise gone so far as tonotice that Milly appeared not to have done so--which the girl mighteasily have betrayed; and, interested as she was in everything thatconcerned her, she had made out for he
rself, for herself only andrather idly, that, but for interruptions, the young Englishman mighthave become a better acquaintance. His being an acquaintance at all wasone of the signs that in the first days had helped to place Milly, as ayoung person with the world before her, for sympathy and wonder.Isolated, unmothered, unguarded, but with her other strong marks, herbig house, her big fortune, her big freedom, she had lately begun to"receive," for all her few years, as an older woman might have done--aswas done, precisely, by princesses who had public considerations toobserve and who came of age very early. If it was thus distinct to Mrs.Stringham then that Mr. Densher had gone off somewhere else inconnection with his errand before her visit to New York, it had beenalso not undiscoverable that he had come back for a day or two lateron, that is after her own second excursion--that he had in finereappeared on a single occasion on his way to the West: his way fromWashington as she believed, though he was out of sight at the time ofher joining her friend for their departure. It had not occurred to herbefore to exaggerate--it had not occurred to her that she could; butshe seemed to become aware to-night that there had been just enough inthis relation to meet, to provoke, the free conception of a little more.
She presently put it that, at any rate, promise or no promise, Millywould, at a pinch, be able, in London, to act on his permission to makehim a sign; to which Milly replied with readiness that her ability,though evident, would be none the less quite wasted, inasmuch as thegentleman would, to a certainty, be still in America. He had a greatdeal to do there--which he would scarce have begun; and in fact shemight very well not have thought of London at all if she hadn't beensure he wasn't yet near coming back. It was perceptible to hercompanion that the moment our young woman had so far committed herselfshe had a sense of having overstepped; which was not quite patched upby her saying the next minute, possibly with a certain failure ofpresence of mind, that the last thing she desired was the air ofrunning after him. Mrs. Stringham wondered privately what questionthere could be of any such appearance--the danger of which thussuddenly came up; but she said, for the time, nothing of it--she onlysaid other things: one of which was, for instance, that if Mr. Densherwas away he was away, and that this was the end of it; also that ofcourse they must be discreet at any price. But what was the measure ofdiscretion, and how was one to be sure? So it was that, as they satthere, she produced her own case: _she_ had a possible tie with London,which she desired as little to disown as she might wish to riskpresuming on it. She treated her companion, in short, for theirevening's end, to the story of Maud Manningham, the odd but interestingEnglish girl who had formed her special affinity in the old days at theVevey school; whom she had written to, after their separation, with aregularity that had at first faltered and then altogether failed, yetthat had been for the time quite a fine case of crude constancy; sothat it had in fact flickered up again of itself on the occasion of themarriage of each. They had then once more fondly, scrupulouslywritten--Mrs. Lowder first; and even another letter or two hadafterwards passed. This, however, had been the end--though with norupture, only a gentle drop: Maud Manningham had made, she believed, agreat marriage, while she herself had made a small; on top of which,moreover, distance, difference, diminished community and impossiblereunion had done the rest of the work. It was but after all these yearsthat reunion had begun to show as possible--if the other party to it,that is, should be still in existence. That was exactly what it nowstruck our friend as interesting to ascertain, as, with one aid andanother, she believed she might. It was an experiment she would at allevents now make if Milly didn't object.
Milly in general objected to nothing, and, though she asked a questionor two, she raised no present plea. Her questions--or at least her ownanswers to them--kindled, on Mrs. Stringham's part, a backward train:she hadn't known till tonight how much she remembered, or how fine itmight be to see what had become of large, high-coloured Maud, florid,exotic and alien--which had been just the spell--even to theperceptions of youth. There was the danger--she frankly touchedit--that such a temperament mightn't have matured, with the years, allin the sense of fineness; it was the sort of danger that, in renewingrelations after long breaks, one had always to look in the face. Togather in strayed threads was to take a risk--for which, however, shewas prepared if Milly was. The possible "fun," she confessed, was byitself rather tempting; and she fairly sounded, with this--wound up alittle as she was--the note of fun as the harmless final right of fiftyyears of mere New England virtue. Among the things she was afterwardsto recall was the indescribable look dropped on her, at this, by hercompanion she was still seated there between the candles and beforethe finished supper, while Milly moved about, and the look was long tofigure for her as an inscrutable comment on _her_ notion of freedom.Challenged, at any rate, as for the last wise word, Milly showedperhaps, musingly, charmingly, that, though her attention had beenmainly soundless, her friend's story--produced as a resourceunsuspected, a card from up the sleeve--half surprised, half beguiledher. Since the matter, such as it was, depended on that, she broughtout, before she went to bed, an easy, a light "Risk everything!"
This quality in it seemed possibly a little to deny weight to MaudLowder's evoked presence--as Susan Stringham, still sitting up, became,in excited reflection, a trifle more conscious. Something determinant,when the girl had left her, took place in her--nameless but, as soon asshe had given way, coercive. It was as if she knew again, in thisfulness of time, that she had been, after Maud's marriage, justsensibly outlived or, as people nowadays said, shunted. Mrs. Lowder hadleft her behind, and on the occasion, subsequently, of thecorresponding date in her own life--not the second, the sad one, withits dignity of sadness, but the first, with the meagreness of itssupposed felicity--she had been, in the same spirit, almostpatronisingly pitied. If that suspicion, even when it had ceased tomatter, had never quite died out for her, there was doubtless someoddity in its now offering itself as a link, rather than as anotherbreak, in the chain; and indeed there might well have been for her amood in which the notion of the development of patronage in her quondamschoolmate would have settled her question in another sense. It wasactually settled--if the case be worth our analysis--by the happyconsummation, the poetic justice, the generous revenge, of her havingat last something to show. Maud, on their parting company, had appearedto have so much, and would now--for wasn't it also, in general, quitethe rich law of English life?--have, with accretions, promotions,expansions, ever so much more. Very good; such things might be; sherose to the sense of being ready for them. Whatever Mrs. Lowder mighthave to show--and one hoped one did the presumptions all justice--shewould have nothing like Milly Theale, who constituted the trophyproducible by poor Susan. Poor Susan lingered late--till the candleswere low, and as soon as the table was cleared she opened her neatportfolio. She had not lost the old clue; there were connections sheremembered, addresses she could try; so the thing was to begin. Shewrote on the spot.