The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers and Two Stories by Henry James

Author:Henry James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Published: 2009-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

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 know—it’s too monstrous: they know, they know!”

“And what on earth—?” I felt her incredulity as she held me.

“Why all that we know—and heaven knows what more 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 garden”—I could scarce articulate—“Flora saw!”

Mrs Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. “She has told you?” she panted.

“Not a word—that’s 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 there—1 saw with my eyes: saw she was perfectly aware.”

“Do you mean aware of him?”

“No—of her.” I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious things, for I got the slow reflexion of them in my companion’s face. “Another person—this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful—with such an air also, and such a face!—on the other side of the lake. I was there with the child—quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came.”

“Came how—from where?”

“From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there- but 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 some one you’ve never seen?”

“Never. But some one the child has. Some one you have.” Then to show how I had thought it all out: “My predecessor—the one who died.”

“Miss Jessel?”

“Miss Jessel. You don’t 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 Flora—she’s sure!” But I had no sooner spoken than I caught myself up. “No, for God’s sake, don‘t! She’ll say she isn’t—she’ll lie!”

Mrs Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. “Ah how can you?”

“Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.”

“It’s only, then, to spare you.”

“No, no—there 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 don’t know what I don’t see, what I don’t fear!”

Mrs Grose tried to keep up with me. “You mean you’re afraid of seeing her again?”

“Oh no; that’s nothing—now!” Then I explained. “It’s of not seeing her.”

But my companion only looked wan. “I don’t understand.”

“Why, it’s that the child may keep it up—and that the child assuredly will—without my knowing it.”

At the image of this possibility Mrs

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