VII
I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: They knowits too monstrous: they know, they know!
And what on earth? I felt her incredulity as she held me.
Why, all that we knowand heaven knows what else besides! Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. Two hours ago, in the gardenI could scarce articulateFlora saw!
Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. She has told you? she panted.
Not a wordthats the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of eight, that child! Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of it.
Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. Then how do you know?
I was thereI saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware.
Do you mean aware of him?
Noof her. I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companions face. Another personthis time; but a figure of quite as unmistakeable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadfulwith such an air also, and such a face!on the other side of the lake. I was there with the childquiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came.
Came howfrom where?
From where they come from! She just appeared and stood therebut not so near.
And without coming nearer?
Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you!
My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. Was she someone youve never seen?
Yes. But someone the child has. Someone you have. Then, to show how I had thought it all out: My predecessorthe one who died.
Miss Jessel?
Miss Jessel. You dont believe me? I pressed.
She turned right and left in her distress. How can you be sure?
This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. Then ask Florashes sure! But I had no sooner spoken than I caught myself up. No, for Gods sake, dont! Shell say she isntshell lie!
Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. Ah, how can you?
Because Im clear. Flora doesnt want me to know.
Its only then to spare you.
No, nothere are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it the more I fear. I dont know what I dont seewhat I dont fear!
Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. You mean youre afraid of seeing her again?
Oh, no; thats nothingnow! Then I explained. Its of not seeing her.
But my companion only looked wan. I dont understand you.
Why, its that the child may keep it upand that the child assuredly willwithout my knowing it.
At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to give way to. Dear, dearwe must keep our heads! And after all, if she doesnt mind it! She even tried a grim joke. Perhaps she likes it!
Likes such thingsa scrap of an infant!
Isnt it just a proof of her blessed innocence? my friend bravely inquired.
She brought me, for the instant, almost round. Oh, we must clutch at thatwe must cling to it! If it isnt a proof of what you say, its a proof ofGod knows what! For the womans a horror of horrors.
Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last raising them, Tell me how you know, she said.
Then you admit its what she was? I cried.
Tell me how you know, my friend simply repeated.
Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.
At you, do you meanso wickedly?
Dear me, noI could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. She only fixed the child.
Mrs. Grose tried to see it. Fixed her?
Ah, with such awful eyes!
She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. Do you mean of dislike?
God help us, no. Of something much worse.
Worse than dislike?this left her indeed at a loss.
With a determinationindescribable. With a kind of fury of intention.
I made her turn pale. Intention?
To get hold of her. Mrs. Groseher eyes just lingering on minegave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking out I completed my statement. Thats what Flora knows.
After a little she turned round. The person was in black, you say?
In mourningrather poor, almost shabby. Butyeswith extraordinary beauty. I now recognised to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed this. Oh, handsomevery, very, I insisted; wonderfully handsome. But infamous.
She slowly came back to me. Miss Jesselwas infamous. She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. They were both infamous, she finally said.
So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. I appreciate, I said, the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing. She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on: I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them.
There was everything.
In spite of the difference?
Oh, of their rank, their conditionshe brought it woefully out. She was a lady.
I turned it over; I again saw. Yesshe was a lady.
And he so dreadfully below, said Mrs. Grose.
I felt that I doubtless neednt press too hard, in such company, on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an acceptance of my companions own measure of my predecessors abasement. There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my full visionon the evidenceof our employers late clever, good-looking own man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. The fellow was a hound.
Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense of shades. Ive never seen one like him. He did what he wished.
With her?
With them all.
It was as if now in my friends own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision: It must have been also what she wished!
Mrs. Groses face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the same time: Poor womanshe paid for it!
Then you do know what she died of? I asked.