The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2

poor gentleman's having somehow been handled as Lord Mark had handled his wife. He dangled there, he shambled a little; then he bethought himself of the Bronzino, before which, with his eyeglass, he hovered. It drew from him an odd, vague sound, not wholly distinct from a grunt, and a 'Humph—most remarkable!' which lighted Kate's face with amusement. The next moment he had creaked away, over polished floors, after the others, and Milly was feeling as if she had been rude. But Lord Aldershaw was in every way a detail, and Kate was saying to her that she hoped she wasn't ill.

Thus it was that, aloft there in the great gilded historic chamber and the presence of the pale personage on the wall, whose eyes all the while seemed engaged with her own, she found herself suddenly sunk in something quite intimate and humble and to which these grandeurs were strange enough witnesses. It had come up, in the form in which she had had to accept it, all suddenly, and nothing about it, at the same time, was more marked than that she had in a manner plunged into it to escape from something else. Something else, from her first vision of her friend's appearance three minutes before, had been present to her even through the call made by the others on her attention; something that was perversely there, she was more and more uncomfortably finding, at least for the first moments and by some spring of its own, with every renewal of their meeting. 'Is it the way she looks to him?' she asked herself—the perversity being that she kept in remembrance that Kate was known to him. It wasn't a fault in Kate—nor in him assuredly; and she had a horror, being generous and tender, of treating either of them as if it had been. To Densher himself she couldn't make it up—he was too far away; but her secondary impulse was to make it up to Kate. She did so now with a strange soft energy—the impulse immediately acting. 'Will you render me to-morrow a great service?'

'Any service, dear child, in the world.'

'But it's a secret one—nobody must know. I must be wicked and false about it.'

'Then I'm your woman,' Kate smiled, 'for that's the kind of thing I love. Do let us do something bad. You're impossibly without sin, you know.'

Milly's eyes, on this, remained a little with their companion's. 'Ah, I shan't perhaps come up to your idea. It's only to deceive Susan Shepherd.'

'Oh!' said Kate as if this were indeed mild.

'But thoroughly—as thoroughly as I can.'

'And for cheating,' Kate asked, 'my powers will contribute? Well, I'll do my best for you.' In accordance with which it was presently settled between them that Milly should have the aid and comfort of her presence for a visit to Sir Luke Strett. Kate had needed a minute for enlightenment, and it was quite grand for her comrade that this name should have said nothing to her. To Milly herself it had for some days been secretly saying much. The personage in question was, as she explained, the greatest of medical lights if she had got hold, as she believed (and she had used to this end the wisdom of the serpent) of the right, the special man. She had written to him three days before, and he had named her an hour, eleven-twenty; only it had come to her, on the eve, that she couldn't go alone. Her maid, on the other hand, wasn't good enough, and Susie was too good. Kate had listened, above all, with high indulgence. 'And I'm betwixt and between, happy thought! Too good for what?'

Milly thought. 'Why, to be worried if it's nothing. And to be still more worried—I mean before she need be—if it isn't.'

Kate fixed her with deep eyes. 'What in the world is the matter with you?' It had inevitably a sound of impatience, as if it had been a challenge really to produce something; so that Milly felt her for the moment only as a much older person, standing above her a little, doubting the imagined ailments, suspecting the easy complaints, of ignorant youth. It somewhat checked her, further, that the matter with her was what exactly as yet she wanted knowledge about; and she immediately declared, for conciliation, that if she were merely fanciful Kate would see her put to shame. Kate vividly uttered, in return, the hope that, since she could come out and be so charming, could so universally dazzle and interest, she wasn't all the while in distress or in anxiety—didn't believe herself, in short, to be in any degree seriously menaced. 'Well, I want to make out—to make out!' was all that this consistently produced. To which Kate made clear answer: 'Ah then, let us by all means!'

'I thought,' Milly said, 'you would like to help me. But I must ask you, please, for the promise of absolute silence.'

'And how, if you are ill, can your friends remain in ignorance?'

'Well, if I am, it must of course finally come out. But I can go for a long time.' Milly spoke with her eyes again on her painted sister's—almost as if under their suggestion. She still sat there before Kate, yet not without a light in her face. 'That will be one of my advantages. I think I could die without its being noticed.'

'You're an extraordinary young woman,' her friend, visibly held by her, declared at last. 'What a remarkable time to talk of such things!'

'Well, we won't talk, precisely'—Milly got herself together again. 'I only wanted to make sure of you.'

'Here in the midst of——!' But Kate could only sigh for wonder—almost visibly too for pity.

It made a moment during which her companion waited on her word; partly as if from a yearning, shy but deep, to have her case put to her just as Kate was struck by it; partly as if the hint of pity were already giving a sense to her whimsical 'shot,' with Lord Mark, at Mrs. Lowder's first dinner. Exactly this—the handsome girl's compassionate manner, her friendly descent from her own strength—was what she had then foretold. She took Kate up as if positively for the deeper taste of it. 'Here in the midst of what?'

'Of everything. There's nothing you can't have. There's nothing you can't do.'

'So Mrs. Lowder tells me.'

It just kept Kate's eyes fixed as possibly for more of that; then, however, without waiting, she went on. 'We all adore you.'

'You're wonderful—you dear things!' Milly laughed.

'No, it's you.' And Kate seemed struck with the real interest of it. 'In three weeks!'

Milly kept it up. 'Never were people on such terms! All the more reason,' she added, 'that I shouldn't needlessly torment you.'

'But me? what becomes of me?' said Kate.

'Well, you—' Milly thought—'if there's anything to bear, you'll bear it.'