Wings of the Dove (Barnes & Noble Classi - Henry James [73]
It had cleared perhaps to a view only too extensive—extensive, that is, in proportion to the signs of life presented. The idea of “people” was not so entertained on Milly’s part as to connect itself with particular persons, and the fact remained for each of the ladies that they would, completely unknown, disembark at Dover amid the completely unknowing. They had no relation already formed; this plea Mrs. Stringham put forward to see what it would produce. It produced nothing at first but the observation on the girl’s side that what she had in mind was no thought of society nor of scraping acquaintance; nothing was further from her than to desire the opportunities represented for the compatriot in general by a trunkful of “letters.” It wasn’t a question, in short, of the people the compatriot was after; it was the human, the English picture itself, as they might see it in their own way—the concrete world inferred so fondly, from what one had read and dreamed. Mrs. Stringham did every justice to this concrete world, but when later on an occasion chanced to present itself she made a point of not omitting to remark that it might be a comfort to know in advance one or two of the human particles of its concretion. This still, however, failed, in vulgar parlance, to “fetch” Milly, so that she had presently to go all the way. “Haven’t I understood from you, for that matter, that you gave Mr. Densher something of a promise?”
There was a moment, on this, when Milly’s look had to be taken as representing one of two things—either that she was completely vague about the promise or that Mr. Densher’s name itself started no train. But she really couldn’t be so vague about the promise, the partner of these hours quickly saw, without attaching it to something; it had to be a promise to somebody in particular to be so repudiated. In the event, accordingly, she acknowledged Mr. Merton Densher, the so unusually “bright” young Englishman who had made his appearance in New York on some special literary business—wasn’t it?—shortly before their departure, and who had been three or four times in her house during the brief period between her visit to Boston and her companion’s subsequent stay with her; but she required much reminding before it came back to her that she had mentioned to this companion just afterwards the confidence expressed by the personage in question in her never doing so dire a thing as to come to London without, as the phrase was, looking a fellow up. She had left him the enjoyment of his confidence, the form of which might have appeared a trifle free—this she now reasserted; she had done nothing either to impair or to enhance it; but she had also left Mrs. Stringham, in the connexion and at the time, rather sorry to have missed Mr. Densher. She had thought of him again after that, the elder woman; she had likewise gone so far as to notice that Milly appeared not to have done so—which the girl might easily have betrayed; and, interested as she was in everything that concerned her, she had made out for herself, for herself only and rather idly, that, but for interruptions, the young Englishman might have become a better acquaintance. His being an acquaintance at all was one of the signs that in the first days had helped to place Milly, as a young person with the world before her, for sympathy and wonder. Isolated, unmothered, unguarded, but with her other strong marks, her big house, her big fortune, her big freedom, she had lately begun to “receive,” for all her few years, as an older woman might have done—as was done, precisely, by princesses who had public considerations to observe and who came of age very