To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light.
Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and again-- how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature.
I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than just this attempt to supply, one's self, ALL the nature.
How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure?
Well, a sort of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion.
It was indeed as if he had found even now--as he had so often found at lessons--still some other delicate way to ease me off.
Wasn't there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?-- the fact that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence?
What had his intelligence been given him for but to save him?
Mightn't one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way.
The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some humorous judgment.
But what he presently produced was: "I say, my dear, is she really very awfully ill?"
"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll presently be better.
London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her.
Come here and take your mutton."
He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, when he was established, went on.
"Did Bly disagree with her so terribly suddenly?"
"Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on."
"Then why didn't you get her off before?"
"Before what?"
"Before she became too ill to travel."
I found myself prompt. "She's NOT too ill to travel: she only might have become so if she had stayed.
This was just the moment to seize. The journey will dissipate the influence"--oh, I was grand!--"and carry it off."
"I see, I see"--Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to his repast with the charming little "table manner" that, from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition.
Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding.
He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation.
Our meal was of the briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us-- as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us.
"Well--so we're alone!"