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<h2> IV </h2>
<p>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 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 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.</p>
<p>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 complications. 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 practiced 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 traveler, 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.</p>
<p>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 gray prose of my
office. There was to be no gray 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
headmasters—turn infallibly to the vindictive.</p>
<p>Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it never
made Miles a muff) that kept them—how 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.</p>
<p>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 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 gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it
enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, 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 recognized; 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.</p>
<p>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 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.</p>
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