“Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try, as I’ve told you before, and you’ll see. You’ll have me perfectly, always, to refer to.”
“Oh rather, I hope! But if she’s going away?”
It pulled Kate up but a moment. “I’ll bring her back. There you are. You won’t be able to say I haven’t made it smooth for you.”
He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But it wasn’t the queerness that after another minute was uppermost. He was in a wondrous silken web, and it was amusing. “You spoil me!”
He wasn’t sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this juncture reappeared, had caught his word as it dropped from him; probably not, he thought, her attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and who was now, none too soon, taking leave of her. They were followed by Lord Mark and by the other men, but two or three things happened before any dispersal of the company began. One of these was that Kate found time to say to him with furtive emphasis: “You must go now!” Another was that she next addressed herself in all frankness to Lord Mark, drew near to him with an almost reproachful “Come and talk to me!”— a challenge resulting after a minute for Densher in a consciousness of their installation together in an out-of-the-way corner, though not the same he himself had just occupied with her. Still another was that Mrs. Stringham, in the random intensity of her farewells, affected him as looking at him with a small grave intimation, something into which he afterwards read the meaning that if he had happened to desire a few words with her after dinner he would have found her ready. This impression was naturally light, but it just left him with the sense of something by his own act overlooked, unappreciated. It gathered perhaps a slightly sharper shade from the mild formality of her “Good-night, sir!” as she passed him; a matter as to which there was now nothing more to be done, thanks to the alertness of the young man he by this time had appraised as even more harmless than himself. This personage had forestalled him in opening the door for her and was evidently — with a view, Densher might have judged, to ulterior designs on Milly — proposing to attend her to her carriage. What further occurred was that Aunt Maud, having released her, immediately had a word for himself. It was an imperative “Wait a minute,” by which she both detained and dismissed him; she was particular about her minute, but he hadn’t yet given her, as happened, a sign of withdrawal.
“Return to our little friend. You’ll find her really interesting.”
“If you mean Miss Theale,” he said, “I shall certainly not forget her. But you must remember that, so far as her ‘interest’ is concerned, I myself discovered, I— as was said at dinner — invented her.”
“Well, one seemed rather to gather that you hadn’t taken out the patent. Don’t, I only mean, in the press of other things, too much neglect her.”
Affected, surprised by the coincidence of her appeal with Kate’s, he asked himself quickly if it mightn’t help him with her. He at any rate could but try. “You’re all looking after my manners. That’s exactly, you know, what Miss Croy has been saying to me. She keeps me up — she has had so much to say about them.”
He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess an account of his passage with Kate that, while quite veracious, might be reassuring to herself. But Aunt Maud, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it as if her confidence were supplied with other props. If she saw his intention in it she yet blinked neither with doubt nor with acceptance; she only said imperturbably: “Yes, she’ll herself do anything for her friend; so that she but preaches what she practises.”
Densher really quite wondered if Aunt Maud knew how far Kate’s devotion went. He was moreover a little puzzled by this special harmony; in face of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Lowder had bethought herself of the American girl as a distraction for him, and if Kate’s mastery of the subject were therefore but an appearance addressed to her aunt. What might really become in all this of the American girl was therefore a question that, on the latter contingency, would lose none of its sharpness. However, questions could wait, and it was easy, so far as he understood, to meet Mrs. Lowder. “It isn’t a bit, all the same, you know, that I resist. I find Miss Theale charming.”
Well, it was all she wanted. “Then don’t miss a chance.”
“The only thing is,” he went on, “that she’s — naturally now — leaving town and, as I take it, going abroad.”
Aunt Maud looked indeed an instant as if she herself had been dealing with this difficulty. “She won’t go,” she smiled in spite of it, “till she has seen you. Moreover, when she does go —” She paused, leaving him uncertain. But the next minute he was still more at sea. “We shall go too.”
He gave a smile that he himself took for slightly strange. “And what good will that do me?”
“We shall be near them somewhere, and you’ll come out to us.”
“Oh!” he said a little awkwardly.
“I’ll see that you do. I mean I’ll write to you.”
“Ah thank you, thank you!” Merton Densher laughed. She was indeed putting him on his honour, and his honour winced a little at the use he rather helplessly saw himself suffering her to believe she could make of it. “There are all sorts of things,” he vaguely remarked, “to consider.”
“No doubt. But there’s above all the great thing.”
“And pray what’s that?”
“Why the importance of your not losing the occasion of your life. I’m treating you handsomely, I’m looking after it for you. I can — I can smooth your path. She’s charming, she’s clever and she’s good. And her fortune’s a real fortune.”
Ah there she was, Aunt Maud! The pieces fell together for him as he felt her thus buying him off, and buying him — it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so grave — with Miss Theale’s money. He ventured, derisive, fairly to treat it as extravagant. “I’m much obliged to you for the handsome offer —”
“Of what doesn’t belong to me?” She wasn’t abashed. “I don’t say it does — but there’s no reason it shouldn’t to you. Mind you, moreover”— she kept it up —“I’m not one who talks in the air. And you owe me something — if you want to know why.”
Distinct he felt her pressure; he felt, given her basis, her consistency; he even felt, to a degree that was immediately to receive an odd confirmation, her truth. Her truth, for that matter, was that she believed him bribeable: a belief that for his own mind as well, while they stood there, lighted up the impossible. What then in this light did Kate believe him? But that wasn’t what he asked aloud. “Of course I know I owe you thanks for a deal of kind treatment. Your inviting me for instance to-night —!”
“Yes, my inviting you to-night’s a part of it. But you don’t know,” she added, “how far I’ve gone for you.”
He felt himself red and as if his honour were colouring up; but he laughed again as he could. “I see how far you’re going.”
“I’m the most honest woman in the world, but I’ve nevertheless done for you what was necessary.” And then as her now quite sombre gravity only made him stare: “To start you it was necessary. From me it has the weight.” He but continued to stare, and she met his blankness with surprise. “Don’t you understand me? I’ve told the proper lie for you.” Still he only showed her his flushed strained smile; in spite of which, speaking with force and as if he must with a minute’s reflexion see what she meant, she turned away from him. “I depend upon you now to make me right!”
The minute’s reflexion he was of course more free to take after he had left the house. He walked up the Bayswater Road, but he stopped short, under the murky stars, before the modern church, in the middle