Wings of the Dove (Barnes & Noble Classi - Henry James [166]
“That she must be made so—that’s the point. It seemed enough, as he told me,” Mrs. Stringham went on; “he makes it somehow such a grand possible affair.”
“Ah well, if he makes it possible!”
“I mean especially he makes it grand. He gave it to me, that is, as my part. The rest’s his own.”
“And what’s the rest?” Mrs. Lowder asked.
“I don’t know. His business. He means to keep hold of her.”
“Then why do you say it isn’t a ‘case’? It must be very much of one.”
Everything in Mrs. Stringham confessed to the extent of it. “It’s only that it isn’t the case she herself supposed.”
“It’s another?”
“It’s another.”
“Examining her for what she supposed he finds something else?”
“Something else.”
“And what does he find?”
“Ah,” Mrs. Stringham cried, “God keep me from knowing!”
“He didn’t tell you that?”
But poor Susie had recovered herself. “What I mean is that if it’s there I shall know in time. He’s considering, but I can trust him for it—because he does, I feel, trust me. He’s considering,” she repeated.
“He’s in other words not sure?”
“Well, he’s watching. I think that’s what he means. She’s to get away now, but to come back to him in three months.”
“Then I think,” said Maud Lowder, “that he oughtn’t meanwhile to scare us.”
It roused Susie a little, Susie, being already enrolled in the great doctor’s cause. This came out at least in her glimmer of reproach. “Does it scare us to enlist us for her happiness?”
Mrs. Lowder was rather stiff for it. “Yes; it scares me. I’m always scared—I may call it so—till I understand. What happiness is he talking about?”
Mrs. Stringham at this came straight. “Oh you know!”
She had really said it so that her friend had to take it; which the latter in fact after a moment showed herself as having done. A strange light humour in the matter even perhaps suddenly aiding, she met it with a certain accommodation. “Well, say one seems to see. The point is—!” But, fairly too full now of her question, she dropped.
“The point is will it cure?”
“Precisely. Is it absolutely a remedy—the specific?”
“Well, I should think we might know!” Mrs. Stringham delicately declared.
“Ah but we haven’t the complaint.”
“Have you never, dearest, been in love?” Susan Shepherd inquired.
“Yes, my child; but not by the doctor’s direction.”
Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a break into momentary mirth, which operated—and happily too—as a challenge to her visitor’s spirit. “Oh of course we don’t ask his leave to fall. But it’s something to know he thinks it good for us.”
“My dear woman,” Mrs. Lowder cried, “it strikes me we know it without him. So that when that’s all he has to tell us—!”
“Ah,” Mrs. Stringham interposed, “it isn’t ‘all.’ I feel Sir Luke will have more; he won’t have put me off with anything inadequate. I’m to see him again; he as good as told me that he’ll wish it. So it won’t be for nothing.”
“Then what will it be for? Do you mean he has somebody of his own to propose? Do you mean you told him nothing?”
Mrs. Stringham dealt with these questions. “I showed him I understood him. That was all I could do. I didn’t feel at liberty to be explicit; but I felt, even though his visit so upset me, the comfort of what I had from you night before last.”
“What I spoke to you of in the carriage when we had left her with Kate?”
“You had seen, apparently, in three minutes. And now that he’s here, now that I’ve met him and had my impression of him, I feel,” said Mrs. Stringham, “that you’ve been magnificent.”
“Of course I’ve been magnificent. When,” asked Maud Manningham, “was I anything else? But Milly won’t be, you know, if she marries Merton Densher.”
“Oh it’s always magnificent to marry the man one loves. But we’re going fast!” Mrs. Stringham woefully smiled.
“The thing is to go fast if I see the case right. What had I after all but my instinct of that on coming back with you, night before last, to pick up Kate? I felt what I felt—I knew in my bones the man had returned.”
“That’s just where, as I say, you’re magnificent. But wait,” said Mrs. Stringham, “