The Wings of the Dove, Volume 2

'But you don't like him for Milly either.'

Mrs. Stringham rose as she spoke, and her friend also got up. 'I like him, my dear, for myself.'

'Then that's the best way of all.'

'Well, it's one way. He's not good enough for my niece, and he's not good enough for you. One's an aunt, one's a wretch and one's a fool.'

'Oh I'm not—not either,' Susie declared.

But her companion kept on. 'One lives for others. You do that. If I were living for myself I shouldn't at all mind him.'

But Mrs. Stringham was sturdier. 'Ah if I find him charming it's however I'm living.'

Well, it broke Mrs. Lowder down. She hung fire but an instant, giving herself away with a laugh. 'Of course he's all right in himself.'

'That's all I contend,' Susie said with more reserve; and the note in question—what Merton Densher was 'in himself'—closed practically, with some inconsequence, this first of their councils.

II

It had at least made the difference for them, they could feel, of an informed state in respect to the great doctor, whom they were now to take as watching, waiting, studying, or at any rate as proposing to himself some such process before he should make up his mind. Mrs. Stringham understood him as considering the matter meanwhile in a spirit that, on this same occasion, at Lancaster Gate, she had come back to a rough notation of before retiring. She followed the course of his reckoning. If what they had talked of could happen—if Milly, that is, could have her thoughts taken off herself—it wouldn't do any harm and might conceivably do much good. If it couldn't happen—if, anxiously, though tactfully working, they themselves, conjoined, could do nothing to contribute to it— they would be in no worse a box than before. Only in this latter case the girl would have had her free range for the summer, for the autumn; she would have done her best in the sense enjoined on her, and, coming back at the end to her eminent man, would—besides having more to show him—find him more ready to go on with her. It was visible further to Susan Shepherd—as well as being ground for a second report to her old friend—that Milly did her part for a working view of the general case, inasmuch as she mentioned frankly and promptly that she meant to go and say good-bye to Sir Luke Strett and thank him. She even specified what she was to thank him for, his having been so easy about her behaviour.

'You see I didn't know that—for the liberty I took—I shouldn't afterwards get a stiff note from him.'

So much Milly had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. 'Oh you'll never get a stiff note from him in your life.'

She felt her rashness, the next moment, at her young friend's question. 'Why not, as well as any one else who has played him a trick?'

'Well, because he doesn't regard it as a trick. He could understand your action. It's all right, you see.'

'Yes—I do see. It is all right. He's easier with me than with any one else, because that's the way to let me down. He's only making believe, and I'm not worth hauling up.'

Rueful at having provoked again this ominous flare, poor Susie grasped at her only advantage. 'Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strett of trifling with you?'

She couldn't blind herself to the look her companion gave her—a strange half-amused perception of what she made of it. 'Well, so far as it's trifling with me to pity me so much.'

'He doesn't pity you,' Susie earnestly reasoned. 'He just—the same as any one else—likes you.'

'He has no business then to like me. He's not the same as any one else.'

'Why not, if he wants to work for you?'

Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. 'Ah there you are!' Mrs. Stringham coloured, for there indeed she was again. But Milly let her off. 'Work for me, all the same—work for me! It's of course what I want.' Then as usual she embraced her friend. 'I'm not going to be as nasty as this to him.'

'I'm sure I hope not!'—and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. 'I've no doubt, however, he'd take it from you! It's you, my dear, who are not the same as any one else.'

Milly's assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. 'No, so that people can take anything from me.' And what Mrs. Stringham did indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact between them of an odd independence—an independence positively of action and custom—on the subject of Milly's future. They went their separate ways with the girl's intense assent; this being really nothing but what she had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham's first encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or was to have other encounters—private pointed personal; she favoured every idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on as if nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that would be her way; and though her companions learned from herself nothing of it this was in the event her way with her medical adviser. She put her visit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to tell him how touched she had been by his good nature. That required little explaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood he could but reply that it was all right.

'I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've got good friends.'

'So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think,' Milly went on, 'of all of them together. You're excellent for each other. And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me.'

There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of her alarms—the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too far, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility if not of value. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. He would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at every point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no doubt, rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn't hate her, since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea that she might somehow so do her good. Such, however, was not the way in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to do it. He wouldn't have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word, Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with her smooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such another lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk with Susie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she would assist also to make this right.