XXIV
The next thing she knew, something had split her attention clean in two. She was on her feet, had him by the arm, had him close, and was falling with him against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively keeping his back to the window. For there, full upon them as on that other dreadful occasion, Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. He had reached the glass from outside, and now, close to the pane, glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. The horror of the immediate presence struck her, but in that very horror came the inspiration: she felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, she might. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul. She saw how the human soul, held out in the tremor of her hands at arm’s length, had a perfect dew of sweat upon a lovely childish forehead.
Miles answered her question. “Yes—I took it.” With a moan of joy she drew him to her breast and felt the tremendous pulse of his little heart, while her eyes remained on the thing at the window. The thing shifted its posture, prowling like a baffled beast, and she had to shade, as it were, her flame. “What did you take it for?” “To see what you said about me.” “You opened the letter?” “I opened it.” His little face, as she held him off again, showed her how complete was the ravage of his uneasiness. She let her elation out. “And you found nothing!” He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. “Nothing.” “Nothing, nothing!” she almost shouted. “Nothing, nothing,” he sadly repeated.
She kissed his drenched forehead. “So what have you done with it?” “I’ve burnt it.” And then, because it was now or never: “Is that what you did at school?” “At school?” “Did you take letters?—or other things?” “Other things?” He appeared to be thinking of something far off. “Did I steal?” She reddened to the roots of her hair. “Was it for that you mightn’t go back?” “Did you know I mightn’t go back?” “I know everything.” He gave her the longest and strangest look. “Everything?” “Everything. Therefore did you——?” But she could not say it again. Miles could, very simply. “No. I didn’t steal.”
Her face must have shown him she believed him utterly, yet her hands shook him, as if for pure tenderness, to ask why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned her to months of torment. “What then did you do?” He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath two or three times over, as if standing at the bottom of the sea. “Well—I said things.” “Only that?” “They thought it was enough.” “To turn you out for?” “Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.” “But to whom did you say them?” “I don’t know!” “Was it to everyone?” “No; it was only to——” But he gave a sick little headshake. “I don’t remember their names.” “Were they then so many?” “No—only a few. Those I liked.”
Those he liked? She seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to her, out of her very pity, the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. For if he were innocent, what then on earth was she? Paralysed for an instant by the mere brush of the question, she let him go a little, and he turned with a deep-drawn sigh toward the clear window. “And did they repeat what you said?” “Oh, yes—they must have repeated them. To those they liked.” “And these things came round——?” “To the masters? Oh, yes!” he answered simply. “But I didn’t know they’d tell.” “The masters? They didn’t—they’ve never told. That’s why I ask you.” He turned to her again his little beautiful fevered face. “Yes, it was too bad.” “Too bad?” “What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.”
She threw off, with homely force: “Stuff and nonsense!” But the next instant she must have sounded stern enough. “What were these things?” His sternness was all for his judge and executioner; yet it made him avert himself again, and that movement made her, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of their woe—the white face of damnation. She felt the wildness of her leap betray her. He met it with a divination; on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still to his own eyes free, she let the impulse flame up. “No more, no more, no more!” she shrieked. “Is she here?” Miles panted, catching with his sealed eyes the direction of her words. “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!” he cried with sudden fury.
She seized, stupefied, his supposition. “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the window—straight before us. It’s there—the coward horror, there for the last time!” At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled dog’s on a scent, then a frantic little shake for air and light, he was at her in a white rage, glaring vainly. “It’s he?” “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” “Peter Quint—you devil!” His face gave its convulsed supplication. “Where?” She launched at the beast. “What does he matter now, my own?—what will he ever matter? I have you, but he has lost you for ever! There, there!” she said to Miles.
But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss she was so proud of, he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which she recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. She caught him, yes, she held him—it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute she began to feel what it truly was that she held. They were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
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