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The Turn of the Screw-Part4_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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at shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush,

would have been the right result of our straight mutual stare.



He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house,

very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge.



So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page;

then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle,



he slowly changed his place--passed, looking at me hard all

the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had



the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his

eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand,



as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next.

He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even



as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away;

that was all I knew.



IV

It was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion,



for more, for I was rooted as deeply as I was shaken.

Was there a "secret" at Bly--a mystery of Udolpho or an insane,



an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?

I can't say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a confusion



of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my collision;

I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had quite



closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me

and driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked



three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed

that this mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill.



The most singular part of it, in fact--singular as the rest had been--

was the part I became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose.



This picture comes back to me in the general train--the impression,

as I received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space,



bright in the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet,

and of the good surprised look of my friend, which immediately



told me she had missed me. It came to me straightway,

under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere relieved



anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that

could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her.



I had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would

pull me up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I



had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate to mention it.

Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd



as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one,

as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion.



On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her

eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased,



achieved an inward resolution--offered a vague pretext

for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night



and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible

to my room.



Here it was another affair; here, for many days after,

it was a queer affair enough. There were hours, from day



to day--or at least there were moments, snatched even from

clear duties--when I had to shut myself up to think.



It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could

bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so;



for the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly,

the truth that I could arrive at no accountwhatever of



the visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet,

as it seemed to me, so intimatelyconcerned. It took little



time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry

and without exciting remark any domestic complications.



The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses;

I felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result



of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced

upon by the servants nor made the object of any "game."



Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me.

There was but one sane inference: someone had taken



a liberty rather gross. That was what, repeatedly, I dipped




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