The Wings of the Dove, Volume 2

Densher was to feel sure afterwards that Kate had had in these pleasantries no conscious, above all no insolent purpose of making light of poor Susan Shepherd's property in their young friend—which property, by such remarks, was very much pushed to the wall; but he was also to know that Mrs. Stringham had secretly resented them, Mrs. Stringham holding the opinion, of which he was ultimately to have a glimpse, that all the Kate Croys in Christendom were but dust for the feet of her Milly. That, it was true, would be what she must reveal only when driven to her last entrenchments and well cornered in her passion—the rare passion of friendship, the sole passion of her little life save the one other, more imperturbably cerebral, that she entertained for the art of Guy de Maupassant. She slipped in the observation that her Milly was incapable of change, was just exactly, on the contrary, the same Milly; but this made little difference in the drift of Kate's contention. She was perfectly kind to Susie: it was as if she positively knew her as handicapped for any disagreement by feeling that she, Kate, had 'type,' and by being committed to admiration of type. Kate had occasion subsequently—she found it somehow—to mention to our young man Milly's having spoken to her of this view on the good lady's part. She would like—Milly had had it from her—to put Kate Croy in a book and see what she could so do with her. 'Chop me up fine or serve me whole'—it was a way of being got at that Kate professed she dreaded. It would be Mrs. Stringham's, however, she understood, because Mrs. Stringham, oddly, felt that with such stuff as the strange English girl was made of, stuff that (in spite of Maud Manningham, who was full of sentiment) she had never known, there was none other to be employed. These things were of later evidence, yet Densher might even then have felt them in the air. They were practically in it already when Kate, waiving the question of her friend's chemical change, wound up with the comparatively unobjectionable proposition that he must now, having missed so much, take them all up, on trust, further on. He met it peacefully, a little perhaps as an example to Mrs. Stringham—'Oh as far on as you like!' This even had its effect: Mrs. Stringham appropriated as much of it as might be meant for herself. The nice thing about her was that she could measure how much; so that by the time dinner was over they had really covered ground.

IV

The younger of the other men, it afterwards appeared, was most in his element at the piano; so that they had coffee and comic songs upstairs—the gentlemen, temporarily relinquished, submitting easily in this interest to Mrs. Lowder's parting injunction not to sit too tight. Our especial young man sat tighter when restored to the drawing-room; he made it out perfectly with Kate that they might, off and on, foregather without offence. He had perhaps stronger needs in this general respect than she; but she had better names for the scant risks to which she consented. It was the blessing of a big house that intervals were large and, of an August night, that windows were open; whereby, at a given moment, on the wide balcony, with the songs sufficiently sung, Aunt Maud could hold her little court more freshly. Densher and Kate, during these moments, occupied side by side a small sofa—a luxury formulated by the latter as the proof, under criticism, of their remarkably good conscience. 'To seem not to know each other—once you're here—would be,' the girl said, 'to overdo it'; and she arranged it charmingly that they must have some passage to put Aunt Maud off the scent. She would be wondering otherwise what in the world they found their account in. For Densher, none the less, the profit of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial and poor; there were in particular at present more things in his mind than he could bring out while watching the windows. It was true, on the other hand, that she suddenly met most of them—and more than he could see on the spot—by coming out for him with a reference to Milly that was not in the key of those made at dinner. 'She's not a bit right, you know. I mean in health. Just see her to-night. I mean it looks grave. For you she would have come, you know, if it had been at all possible.'

He took this in such patience as he could muster. 'What in the world's the matter with her?'

But Kate continued without saying. 'Unless indeed your being here has been just a reason for her funking it.'

'What in the world's the matter with her?' Densher asked again.

'Why just what I've told you—that she likes you so much.'

'Then why should she deny herself the joy of meeting me?'

Kate cast about—it would take so long to explain. 'And perhaps it's true that she is bad. She easily may be.'

'Quite easily, I should say, judging by Mrs. Stringham, who's visibly preoccupied and worried.'

'Visibly enough. Yet it mayn't,' said Kate, 'be only for that.'

'For what then?'

But this question too, on thinking, she neglected. 'Why, if it's anything real, doesn't that poor lady go home? She'd be anxious, and she has done all she need to be civil.'

'I think,' Densher remarked, 'she has been quite beautifully civil.'

It made Kate, he fancied, look at him the least bit harder; but she was already, in a manner, explaining. 'Her preoccupation is probably on two different heads. One of them would make her hurry back, but the other makes her stay. She's commissioned to tell Milly all about you.'

'Well then,' said the young man between a laugh and a sigh, 'I'm glad I felt, downstairs, a kind of 'drawing' to her. Wasn't I rather decent to her?'

'Awfully nice. You've instincts, you fiend. It's all,' Kate declared, 'as it should be.'

'Except perhaps,' he after a moment cynically suggested, 'that she isn't getting much good of me now. Will she report to Milly on this?' And then as Kate seemed to wonder what 'this' might be: 'On our present disregard for appearances.'

'Ah leave appearances to me!' She spoke in her high way. 'I'll make them all right. Aunt Maud, moreover,' she added, 'has her so engaged that she won't notice.' Densher felt, with this, that his companion had indeed perceptive flights he couldn't hope to match—had for instance another when she still subjoined: 'And Mrs. Stringham's appearing to respond just in order to make that impression.'

'Well,' Densher dropped with some humour, 'life's very interesting! I hope it's really as much so for you as you make it for others; I mean judging by what you make it for me. You seem to me to represent it as thrilling for ces dames, and in a different way for each: Aunt Maud, Susan Shepherd, Milly. But what is,' he wound up, 'the matter? Do you mean she's as ill as she looks?'

Kate's face struck him as replying at first that his derisive speech deserved no satisfaction; then she appeared to yield to a need of her own—the need to make the point that 'as ill as she looked' was what Milly scarce could be. If she had been as ill as she looked she could scarce be a question with them, for her end would in that case be near. She believed herself nevertheless—and Kate couldn't help believing her too—seriously menaced. There was always the fact that they had been on the point of leaving town, the two ladies, and had suddenly been pulled up. 'We bade them good-bye—or all but—Aunt Maud and I, the night before Milly, popping so very oddly into the National Gallery for a farewell look, found you and me together. They were then to get off a day or two later. But they've not got off—they're not getting off. When I see them—and I saw them this morning—they have showy reasons. They do mean to go, but they've postponed it.' With which the girl brought out: 'They've postponed it for you.' He protested so far as a man might without fatuity, since a protest was itself