I just missed, on the
staircase, on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it
from the top I once recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of
the lower steps with her back presented to me, her body half-bowed and
her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. I had been there but an
instant, however, when she vanished without looking round at me. I
knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I
wondered whether, if instead of being above I had been below, I should
have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well,
there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night
after my latest encounter with that gentleman—they were all numbered
now—I had an alarm that perilously skirted it and that indeed, from the
particular quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest
shock. It was precisely the first night during this series that, weary
with watching, I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself
down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward knew, till
about one o’clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as
completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light
burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora
had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the
darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the
window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed
the picture. The child had again got up—this time blowing out the taper, and had
again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind
the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw—as she
had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time—was proved to me by
the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the
haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected,
absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill—the casement opened
forward—and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help her,
and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face
with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could now communicate
with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to
care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some
other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing
me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for
some sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her
brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably,
produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke of
as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to _his_
window?—what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of
my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long
halter of my boldness? This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and
pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might
portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were
secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which
my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was
hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds—a figure
prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it
was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but
on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing
the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the
lower one—though high above the gardens—in the solid corner of the
house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square
chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of
which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by
Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it
and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after just faltering at the
first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as
quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving this transit, I
uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying my face to the pane,
was able, the darkness without being much less than within, to see that
I commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon
made the night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a
person, diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if
fascinated, looking up to where I had appeared—looking, that is, not so
much straight at me as at something that was apparently above me. There
was clearly another person above me—there was a person on the tower;
but the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had conceived
and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn—I felt
sick as I made it out—was poor little Miles himself. XI

It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor
with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet
her privately, and the more as we each felt the importance of not
provoking—on the part of the servants quite as much as on that of the
children—any suspicion of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of
mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere
smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others
my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: if
she hadn’t I don’t know what would have become of me, for I couldn’t
have borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to
the blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could see in our
little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their happiness
and cleverness, she had no direct communication with the sources of my
trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she
would doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough to match
them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed
them, with her large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all
her look, thank the Lord’s mercy that if they were ruined the pieces
would still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a
steady fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive how, with the
development of the conviction that—as time went on without a public
accident—our young things could, after all, look out for themselves,
she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented by
their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification: I
could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales, but it
would have been, in the conditions, an immense added strain to find
myself anxious about hers.