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The Turn of the Screw-Part10_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter

of my boldness?



This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his

threshold and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured



to myself what might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were

also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It was a deep,



soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed.

He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous;



I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a figure

prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged;



but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy.

I hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few seconds;



then I had made my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly,

and it was only a question of choosing the right one.



The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower one--

though high above the gardens--in the solid corner of the house



that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large,

square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant



size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years,

though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied.



I had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only,

after just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse,



to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of

the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the glass



without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able,

the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I



commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more.

The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and



showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance,

who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up



to where I had appeared--looking, that is, not so much

straight at me as at something that was apparently above me.



There was clearly another person above me--there was a person

on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the least



what I had conceived and had confidentlyhurried to meet.

The presence on the lawn--I felt sick as I made it out--



was poor little Miles himself.

XI



It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose;

the rigor with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often



difficult to meet her privately, and the more as we each felt

the importance of not provoking--on the part of the servants



quite as much as on that of the children--any suspicion

of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries.



I drew a great security in this particular from her mere

smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass



on to others my horrible confidences. She believed me,

I was sure, absolutely: if she hadn't I don't know what would



have become of me, for I couldn't have borne the business alone.

But she was a magnificentmonument to the blessing of a want



of imagination, and if she could see in our little charges nothing

but their beauty and amiability, their happiness and cleverness,



she had no direct communication with the sources of my trouble.

If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would



doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough

to match them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her,



when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded

and the habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lord's



mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would still serve.

Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow,



and I had already begun to perceive how, with the development

of the conviction that--as time went on without a public accident--



our young things could, after all, look out for themselves,

she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented



by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification:

I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales,



but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added

strain to find myself anxious about hers.



At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure,




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