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The Turn of the Screw-Part11_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things."



My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures

who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their



interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on by;

and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the breath



of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes.

"Of what other things have you got hold?"



"Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet,

at bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me.



Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutelyunnaturalgoodness.

It's a game," I went on; "it's a policy and a fraud!"



"On the part of little darlings--?"

"As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!"



The very act of bringing it out really helped me to

trace it--follow it all up and piece it all together.



"They haven't been good--they've only been absent.

It has been easy to live with them, because they're simply leading



a life of their own. They're not mine--they're not ours.

They're his and they're hers!"



"Quint's and that woman's?"

"Quint's and that woman's. They want to get to them."



Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them!

"But for what?"



"For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days,

the pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still,



to keep up the work of demons, is what brings the others back."

"Laws!" said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but it



revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad time--

for there had been a worse even than this!--must have occurred. There could



have been no such justification for me as the plain assent of her experience

to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our brace of scoundrels.



It was in obvioussubmission of memory that she brought out after a moment:

"They WERE rascals! But what can they now do?" she pursued.



"Do?" I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at

their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us.



"Don't they do enough?" I demanded in a lower tone, while the children,

having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition.



We were held by it a minute; then I answered: "They can destroy them!"

At this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was



a silent one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit.

"They don't know, as yet, quite how--but they're trying hard.



They're seen only across, as it were, and beyond--in strange places

and on high places, the top of towers, the roof of houses, the outside



of windows, the further edge of pools; but there's a deep design,

on either side, to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle;



and the success of the tempters is only a question of time.

They've only to keep to their suggestions of danger."



"For the children to come?"

"And perish in the attempt!" Mrs. Grose slowly got up,



and I scrupulously added: "Unless, of course, we can prevent!"

Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly



turned things over. "Their uncle must do the preventing.

He must take them away."



"And who's to make him?"

She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me



a foolish face. "You, miss."

"By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little



nephew and niece mad?"

"But if they ARE, miss?"



"And if I am myself, you mean? That's charming news to be sent him

by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry."



Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. "Yes, he do hate worry.

That was the great reason--"



"Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his

indifference must have been awful. As I'm not a fiend,



at any rate, I shouldn't take him in."

My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again



and grasped my arm. "Make him at any rate come to you."

I stared. "To ME?" I had a sudden fear of what she might do. "'Him'?"



"He ought to BE here--he ought to help."

I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face






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