The Wings of the Dove - Henry James (classic literature books TXT) 📗

He questioned her in a moment on a different matter, which had been in his mind a week, yet in respect to which he had had no chance so good as this. “Do you happen to know then, as such wonderful things pass between you, what she makes of the incident, the other day, of Lord Mark’s so very superficial visit?⁠—his having spent here, as I gather, but the two or three hours necessary for seeing our friend and yet taken no time at all, since he went off by the same night’s train, for seeing anyone else. What can she make of his not having waited to see you, or to see herself⁠—with all he owes her?”

“Oh of course,” said Kate, “she understands. He came to make Milly his offer of marriage⁠—he came for nothing but that. As Milly wholly declined it his business was for the time at an end. He couldn’t quite on the spot turn round to make up to us.”

Kate had looked surprised that, as a matter of taste on such an adventurer’s part, Densher shouldn’t see it. But Densher was lost in another thought. “Do you mean that when, turning up myself, I found him leaving her, that was what had been taking place between them?”

“Didn’t you make it out, my dear?” Kate enquired.

“What sort of a blundering weathercock then is he?” the young man went on in his wonder.

“Oh don’t make too little of him!” Kate smiled. “Do you pretend that Milly didn’t tell you?”

“How great an ass he had made of himself?”

Kate continued to smile. “You are in love with her, you know.”

He gave her another long look. “Why, since she has refused him, should my opinion of Lord Mark show it? I’m not obliged, however, to think well of him for such treatment of the other persons I’ve mentioned, and I feel I don’t understand from you why Mrs. Lowder should.”

“She doesn’t⁠—but she doesn’t care,” Kate explained. “You know perfectly the terms on which lots of London people live together even when they’re supposed to live very well. He’s not committed to us⁠—he was having his try. Mayn’t an unsatisfied man,” she asked, “always have his try?”

“And come back afterwards, with confidence in a welcome, to the victim of his inconstancy?”

Kate consented, as for argument, to be thought of as a victim. “Oh but he has had his try at me. So it’s all right.”

“Through your also having, you mean, refused him?”

She balanced an instant during which Densher might have just wondered if pure historic truth were to suffer a slight strain. But she dropped on the right side. “I haven’t let it come to that. I’ve been too discouraging. Aunt Maud,” she went on⁠—now as lucid as ever⁠—“considers, no doubt, that she has a pledge from him in respect to me; a pledge that would have been broken if Milly had accepted him. As the case stands that makes no difference.”

Densher laughed out. “It isn’t his merit that he has failed.”

“It’s still his merit, my dear, that he’s Lord Mark. He’s just what he was, and what he knew he was. It’s not for me either to reflect on him after I’ve so treated him.”

“Oh,” said Densher impatiently, “you’ve treated him beautifully.”

“I’m glad,” she smiled, “that you can still be jealous.” But before he could take it up she had more to say. “I don’t see why it need puzzle you that Milly’s so marked line gratifies Aunt Maud more than anything else can displease her. What does she see but that Milly herself recognises her situation with you as too precious to be spoiled? Such a recognition as that can’t but seem to her to involve in some degree your own recognition. Out of which she therefore gets it that the more you have for Milly the less you have for me.”

There were moments again⁠—we know that from the first they had been numerous⁠—when he felt with a strange mixed passion the mastery of her mere way of putting things. There was something in it that bent him at once to conviction and to reaction. And this effect, however it be named, now broke into his tone. “Oh if she began to know what I have for you⁠—!”

It wasn’t ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. “Luckily for us we may really consider she doesn’t. So successful have we been.”

“Well,” he presently said, “I take from you what you give me, and I suppose that, to be consistent⁠—to stand on my feet where I do stand at all⁠—I ought to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me seems to me, more than anything else, the larger and larger size of my job. It seems to me more than anything else what you expect of me. It never seems to me somehow what I may expect of you. There’s so much you don’t give me.”

She appeared to wonder. “And pray what is it I don’t⁠—?”

“I give you proof,” said Densher. “You give me none.”

“What then do you call proof?” she after a moment ventured to ask.

“Your doing something for me.”

She considered with surprise. “Am I not doing this for you? Do you call this nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Ah I risk, my dear, everything for it.”

They had strolled slowly further, but he was brought up short. “I thought you exactly contend that, with your aunt so bamboozled, you risk nothing!”

It was the first time since the launching of her wonderful idea that he had seen her at a loss. He judged the next instant moreover that she didn’t like it⁠—either the being so or the being seen, for she soon spoke with an impatience that showed her as wounded; an appearance that produced in himself, he no less quickly felt, a sharp pang of indulgence. “What then do you wish me to risk?”

The appeal from danger touched him, but all to make him, as he would have said, worse. “What I wish is to be loved. How can I feel at