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

was the best thing to do. She came out as abruptly as Marian had done: ‘If you hear anything against your father⁠—anything I mean, except that he’s odious and vile⁠—remember it’s perfectly false.’ That was the way I knew⁠—it was true, though I recall that I said to her then that I of course knew it wasn’t. She might have told me it was true, and yet have trusted me to contradict fiercely enough any accusation of him that I should meet⁠—to contradict it much more fiercely and effectively, I think, than she would have done herself. As it happens, however,” the girl went on, “I’ve never had occasion, and I’ve been conscious of it with a sort of surprise. It has made the world, at times, seem more decent. No one has so much as breathed to me. That has been a part of the silence, the silence that surrounds him, the silence that, for the world, has washed him out. He doesn’t exist for people. And yet I’m as sure as ever. In fact, though I know no more than I did then, I’m more sure. And that,” she wound up, “is what I sit here and tell you about my own father. If you don’t call it a proof of confidence I don’t know what will satisfy you.”

“It satisfies me beautifully,” Densher declared, “but it doesn’t, my dear child, very greatly enlighten me. You don’t, you know, really tell me anything. It’s so vague that what am I to think but that you may very well be mistaken? What has he done, if no one can name it?”

“He has done everything.”

“Oh⁠—everything! Everything’s nothing.”

“Well then,” said Kate, “he has done some particular thing. It’s known⁠—only, thank God, not to us. But it has been the end of him. You could doubtless find out with a little trouble. You can ask about.”

Densher for a moment said nothing; but the next moment he made it up. “I wouldn’t find out for the world, and I’d rather lose my tongue than put a question.”

“And yet it’s a part of me,” said Kate.

“A part of you?”

“My father’s dishonour.” Then she sounded for him, but more deeply than ever yet, her note of proud, still pessimism. “How can such a thing as that not be the great thing in one’s life?”

She had to take from him again, on this, one of his long looks, and she took it to its deepest, its headiest dregs. “I shall ask you, for the great thing in your life,” he said, “to depend on me a little more.” After which, just hesitating, “Doesn’t he belong to some club?” he inquired.

She had a grave headshake. “He used to⁠—to many.”

“But he has dropped them?”

“They’ve dropped him. Of that I’m sure. It ought to do for you. I offered him,” the girl immediately continued⁠—“and it was for that I went to him⁠—to come and be with him, make a home for him so far as is possible. But he won’t hear of it.”

Densher took this in with visible, but generous, wonder. “You offered him⁠—‘impossible’ as you describe him to me⁠—to live with him and share his disadvantages?” The young man saw for the moment but the high beauty of it. “You are gallant!”

“Because it strikes you as being brave for him?” She wouldn’t in the least have this. “It wasn’t courage⁠—it was the opposite. I did it to save myself⁠—to escape.”

He had his air, so constant at this stage, as of her giving him finer things than anyone to think about. “Escape from what?”

“From everything.”

“Do you by any chance mean from me?”

“No; I spoke to him of you, told him⁠—or what amounted to it⁠—that I would bring you, if he would allow it, with me.”

“But he won’t allow it,” said Densher.

“Won’t hear of it on any terms. He won’t help me, won’t save me, won’t hold out a finger to me,” Kate went on; “he simply wriggles away, in his inimitable manner, and throws me back.”

“Back then, after all, thank goodness,” Densher concurred, “on me.”

But she spoke again as with the sole vision of the whole scene she had evoked. “It’s a pity, because you’d like him. He’s wonderful⁠—he’s charming.” Her companion gave one of the laughs that marked in him, again, his feeling in her tone, inveterately, something that banished the talk of other women, so far as he knew other women, to the dull desert of the conventional, and she had already continued. “He would make himself delightful to you.”

“Even while objecting to me?”

“Well, he likes to please,” the girl explained⁠—“personally. He would appreciate you and be clever with you. It’s to me he objects⁠—that is as to my liking you.”

“Heaven be praised then,” Densher exclaimed, “that you like me enough for the objection!”

But she met it after an instant with some inconsequence. “I don’t. I offered to give you up, if necessary, to go to him. But it made no difference, and that’s what I mean,” she pursued, “by his declining me on any terms. The point is, you see, that I don’t escape.”

Densher wondered. “But if you didn’t wish to escape me?”

“I wished to escape Aunt Maud. But he insists that it’s through her and through her only that I may help him; just as Marian insists that it’s through her, and through her only, that I can help her. That’s what I mean,” she again explained, “by their turning me back.”

The young man thought. “Your sister turns you back too?”

“Oh, with a push!”

“But have you offered to live with your sister?”

“I would in a moment if she’d have me. That’s all my virtue⁠—a narrow little family feeling. I’ve a small stupid piety⁠—I don’t know what to call it.” Kate bravely sustained it; she made it out. “Sometimes, alone, I’ve to smother my shrieks when I think of my poor mother. She went through things⁠—they pulled her down; I know what they were now⁠—I didn’t then, for I was a pig; and my position, compared with