Wings of the Dove (Barnes & Noble Classi - Henry James [186]
She had said to herself betimes, in a general way, that whatever habits her youth might form, that of seeing an interested suitor in every bush should certainly never grow to be one of them—an attitude she had early judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She had had accordingly in fact as little to do with it as possible and she scarce knew why at the present moment she should have had to catch herself in the act of imputing an ugly motive. It didn’t sit, the ugly motive, in Lord Mark’s cool English eyes; the darker side of it at any rate showed, to her imagination, but briefly. Suspicion moreover, with this, simplified itself: there was a beautiful reason—indeed there were two—why her companion’s motive shouldn’t matter. One was that even should he desire her without a penny she wouldn’t marry him for the world; the other was that she felt him, after all, perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly and humanly, concerned for her. They were also two things, his wishing to be well, to be very well, with her, and his beginning to feel her as threatened, haunted, blighted; but they were melting together for him, making him, by their combination, only the more sure that, as he probably called it to himself, he liked her. That was presently what remained with her—his really doing it; and with the natural and proper incident of being conciliated by her weakness. Would she really have had him—she could ask herself that—disconcerted or disgusted by it? If he could only be touched enough to do what she preferred, not to raise, not to press any question, he might render her a much better service than by merely enabling her to refuse him. Again, again it was strange, but he figured to her for the moment as the one safe sympathizer. It would have made her worse to talk to others, but she wasn’t afraid with him of how he might wince and look pale. She would keep him, that is, her one easy relation—in the sense of easy for himself. Their actual outlook had meanwhile such charm, what surrounded them within and without did so much toward making appreciative stillness as natural as at the opera, that she could consider she hadn’t made him hang on her lips when at last, instead of saying if she were well or ill, she repeated: “I go about here. I don’t get tired of it. I never should—it suits me so. I adore the place,” she went on, “and I don’t want in the least to give it up.”
“Neither should I if I had your luck. Still, with that luck, for one’s all—! Should you positively like to live here?”
“I think I should like,” said poor Milly after an instant, “to die here.”
Which made him, precisely, laugh. That was what she wanted—when a person did care: it was the pleasant human way, without depths of darkness. “Oh it’s not good enough for that! That requires picking. But can’t you keep it? It is, you know, the sort of place to see you in; you carry out the note, fill it, people it, quite by yourself, and you might do much worse—I mean for your friends—than show yourself here a while, three or four months, every year. But it’s not my notion for the rest of the time. One has quite other uses for you.”
“What sort of a use for me is it,” she smilingly inquired, “to kill me?”
“Do you mean we should kill you in England?”
“Well, I’ve seen you and I’m afraid. You’re too much for me— too many. England bristles with questions. This is more, as you say there, my form.”
“Oho, oho!”—he laughed again as