He was a longish, leanish, fairish young Englishman, not unamenable, on certain sides, to classification—as for instance by being a gentleman, by being rather specifically one of the educated, one of the generally sound and generally pleasant; yet, though to that degree neither extraordinary nor abnormal, he would have failed to play straight into an observer's hands. He was young for the House of Commons, he was loose for the army. He was refined, as might have been said, for the city, and, quite apart from the cut of his cloth, he was sceptical, it might have been felt, for the church. On the other hand he was credulous5 for diplomacy6, or perhaps even for science, while he was perhaps at the same time too much in his mere7 senses for poetry, and yet too little in them for art. You would have got fairly near him by making out in his eyes the potential recognition of ideas; but you would have quite fallen away again on the question of the ideas themselves. The difficulty with Densher was that he looked vague without looking weak—idle without looking empty. It was the accident, possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; of his straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the latter, neatly8 smooth, and apt, into the bargain, at the time of quite other calls upon it, to throw itself suddenly back and, supported behind by his uplifted arms and interlocked hands, place him for unconscionable periods in communion with the ceiling, the tree-tops, the sky. He was in short visibly absent-minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was near and to take up what was far; he was more a respecter, in general, than a follower9 of custom. He suggested above all, however, that wondrous10 state of youth in which the elements, the metals more or less precious, are so in fusion11 and fermentation that the question of the final stamp, the pressure that fixes the value, must wait for comparative coolness. And it was a mark of his interesting mixture that if he was irritable12 it was by a law of considerable subtlety—a law that, in intercourse13 with him, it might be of profit, though not easy, to master. One of the effects of it was that he had for you surprises of tolerance14 as well as of temper.
He loitered, on the best of the relenting days, the several occasions we speak of, along the part of the Gardens nearest to Lancaster Gate, and when, always, in due time, Kate Croy came out of her aunt's house, crossed the road and arrived by the nearest entrance, there was a general publicity15 in the proceeding16 which made it slightly anomalous17. If their meeting was to be bold and free it might have taken place within doors; if it was to be shy or secret it might have taken place almost anywhere better than under Mrs. Lowder's windows. They failed indeed to remain attached to that spot; they wandered and strolled, taking in the course of more than one of these interviews a considerable walk, or else picked out a couple of chairs under one of the great trees and sat as much apart—apart from every one else—as possible. But Kate had, each time, at first, the air of wishing to expose herself to pursuit and capture if those things were in question. She made the point that she was not underhand, any more than she was vulgar; that the Gardens were charming in themselves and this use of them a matter of taste; and that, if her aunt chose to glare at her from the drawing-room or to cause her to be tracked and overtaken, she could at least make it convenient that this should be easily done. The fact was that the relation between these young persons abounded18 in such oddities as were not inaptly symbolised by assignations that had a good deal more appearance than motive19. Of the strength of the tie that held them we shall sufficiently20 take the measure; but it was meanwhile almost obvious that if the great possibility had come up for them it had done so, to an exceptional degree, under the protection of the famous law of contraries. Any deep harmony that might eventually govern them would not be the result of their having much in common—having anything, in fact, but their affection; and would really find its explanation in some sense, on the part of each, of being poor where the other was rich. It is nothing new indeed that generous young persons often admire most what nature hasn't given them—from which it would appear, after all, that our friends were both generous.
Merton Densher had repeatedly said to himself—and from far back—that he should be a fool not to marry a woman whose value would be in her differences; and Kate Croy, though without having quite so philosophised, had quickly recognised in the young man a precious unlikeness. He represented what her life had never given her and certainly, without some such aid as his, never would give her; all the high, dim things she lumped together as of the mind. It was on the side of the mind that Densher was rich for her, and mysterious and strong; and he had rendered her in especial the sovereign service of making that element real. She had had, all her days, to take it terribly on trust; no creature she had ever encountered having been able in any degree to testify for it directly. Vague rumours21 of its existence had made their precarious23 way to her; but nothing had, on the whole, struck her as more likely than that she should live and die without the chance to verify them. The chance had come—it was an extraordinary one—on the day she first met Densher; and it was to the girl's lasting24 honour that she knew on the spot what she was in the presence of. That occasion indeed, for everything that straightway flowered in it, would be worthy25 of high commemoration; Densher's perception went out to meet the young woman's and quite kept pace with her own recognition. Having so often concluded on the fact of his weakness, as he called it, for life—his strength merely for thought—life, he logically opined, was what he must somehow arrange to annex26 and possess. This was so much a necessity that thought by itself only went on in the void; it was from the immediate27 air of life that it must draw its breath. So the young man, ingenious but large, critical but ardent28 too, made out both his case and Kate Croy's. They had originally met before her mother's death—an occasion marked for her as the last pleasure permitted by the approach of that event; after which the dark months had interposed a screen and, for all Kate knew, made the end one with the beginning.
The beginning—to which she often went back—had been a scene, for our young woman, of supreme29 brilliancy; a party given at a "gallery" hired by a hostess who fished with big nets. A Spanish dancer, understood to be at that moment the delight of the town, an American reciter, the joy of a kindred people, an Hungarian fiddler, the wonder of the world at large—in the name of these and other attractions the company in which, by a rare privilege, Kate found herself had been freely convoked30. She lived under her mother's roof, as she considered, obscurely, and was acquainted with few persons who entertained on that scale; but she had had dealings with two or three connected, as appeared, with such—two or three through whom the stream of hospitality, filtered or diffused31, could thus now and then spread to outlying receptacles. A good-natured lady in fine, a friend of her mother and a relative of the lady of the gallery, had offered to take her to the party in question and had there fortified32 her, further, with two or three of those introductions that, at large parties, lead to other things—that had at any rate, on this occasion, culminated33 for her in conversation with a tall, fair, slightly unbrushed and rather awkward, but on the whole not dreary34, young man. The young man had affected35 her as detached, as—it was indeed what he called himself—awfully36 at sea, as much more distinct from what surrounded them than any one else appeared to be, and even as probably quite disposed to be making his escape when pulled up to be placed in relation with her. He gave her his word for it indeed, that same evening, that only their meeting had prevented his flight, but that now he saw how sorry he should have been to miss it. This point they had reached by midnight, and though in respect to such remarks everything was in the tone, the tone was by midnight there too. She had had originally her full apprehension37 of his coerced38, certainly of his vague, condition—full apprehensions39 often being with her immediate; then she had had her equal consciousness that, within five minutes, something between them had—well, she couldn't call it anything but come. It was nothing, but it was somehow everything—it was that something for each of them had happened.
They had found themselves looking at each other straight, and for a longer time on end than was usual even at parties in galleries; but that, after all, would have been a small affair, if there hadn't been something else with it. It wasn't, in a word, simply that their eyes had met; other conscious organs, faculties40, feelers had met as well, and when Kate afterwards imaged to herself the sharp, deep fact she saw it, in the oddest way, as a particular performance. She had observed a ladder against a garden wall, and had trusted herself so to climb it as to be able to see over into the probable garden on the other side. On reaching the top she had found herself face to face with a gentleman engaged in a like calculation at the same moment, and the two inquirers had remained confronted on their ladders. The great point was that for the rest of that evening they had been perched—they had not climbed down; and indeed, during the time that followed, Kate at least had had the perched feeling—it was as if she were there aloft without a retreat. A simpler expression of all this is doubtless but that they had taken each other in with interest; and without a happy hazard six months later the incident would have closed in that account of it. The accident, meanwhile, had been as natural as anything in London ever is: Kate had one afternoon found herself opposite Mr. Densher on the Underground Railway. She had entered the train at Sloane Square to go to Queen's Road, and the carriage in which she had found a place was all but full. Densher was already in it—on the other bench and at the furthest angle; she was sure of him before they had again started. The day and the hour were darkness, there were six other persons, and she had been busy placing herself; but her consciousness had gone to him as straight as if they had come together in some bright level of the desert. They had on neither part a second's hesitation41; they looked across the choked compartment42 exactly as if she had known he would be there and he had expected her to come in; so that, though in the conditions they could only exchange the greeting of movements, smiles, silence, it would have been quite in the key of these passages that they should have alighted for ease at the very next station. Kate was in fact sure that the very next station was the young man's true goal—which made it clear that he was going on only from the wish to speak to her. He had to go on, for this purpose, to High Street, Kensington, as it was not till then that the exit of a passenger gave him his chance.
His chance put him, however, in quick possession of the seat facing her, the alertness of his capture of which seemed to show her his impatience43. It helped them, moreover, with strangers on either side, little to talk; though this very restriction44 perhaps made such a mark for them as nothing else could have done. If the fact that their opportunity had again come round for them could be so intensely expressed between them without a word, they might very well feel on the spot that it had not come round for nothing. The extraordinary part of the matter was that they were not in the least meeting where they had left off, but ever so much further on, and that these added links added still another between High Street and Notting Hill Gate, and then between the latter station and Queen's Road an extension really inordinate45. At Notting Hill Gate, Kate's right-hand neighbour descended46, whereupon Densher popped straight into that seat; only there was not much gained when a lady, the next instant, popped into Densher's. He could say almost nothing to her—she scarce knew, at least, what he said; she was so occupied with a certainty that one of the persons opposite, a youngish man with a single eyeglass, which he kept constantly in position, had made her out from the first as visibly, as strangely affected. If such a person made her out, what then did Densher do?—a question in truth sufficiently answered when, on their reaching her station, he instantly followed her out of the train. That had been the real beginning—the beginning of everything else; the other time, the time at the party, had been but the beginning of that. Never in life before had she so let herself go; for always before—so far as small adventures could have been in question for her—there had been, by the vulgar measure, more to go upon. He had walked with her to Lancaster Gate, and then she had walked with him away from it—for all the world, she said to herself, like the housemaid giggling47 to the baker48.
This appearance, she was afterwards to feel, had been all in order for a relation that might precisely49 best be described in the terms of the baker and the housemaid. She could say to herself that from that hour they had kept company; that had come to represent, technically50 speaking, alike the range and the limit of their tie. He had on the spot, naturally, asked leave to call upon her—which, as a young person who wasn't really young, who didn't pretend to be a sheltered flower, she as rationally gave. That—she was promptly51 clear about it—was now her only possible basis; she was just the contemporary London female, highly modern, inevitably52 battered53, honourably54 free. She had of course taken her aunt straight into her confidence—had gone through the form of asking her leave; and she subsequently remembered that though, on this occasion, she had left the history of her new alliance as scant55 as the facts themselves, Mrs. Lowder had struck her at the time surprisingly mild. It had been, in every way, the occasion, full of the reminder56 that her hostess was deep: it was definitely then that she had begun to ask herself what Aunt Maud was, in vulgar parlance57, "up to." "You may receive, my dear, whom you like"—that was what Aunt Maud, who in general objected to people's doing as they liked, had replied; and it bore, this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into. There were many explanations, and they were all amusing—amusing, that is, in the line of the sombre and brooding amusement, cultivated by Kate in her actual high retreat. Merton Densher came the very next Sunday; but Mrs. Lowder was so consistently magnanimous as to make it possible to her niece to see him alone. She saw him, however, on the Sunday following, in order to invite him to dinner; and when, after dining, he came again—which he did three times, she found means to treat his visit as preponderantly to herself. Kate's conviction that she didn't like him made that remarkable58; it added to the evidence, by this time voluminous, that she was remarkable all round. If she had been, in the way of energy, merely usual, she would have kept her dislike direct; whereas it was now as if she were seeking to know him in order to see best where to "have" him. That was one of the reflections made in our young woman's high retreat; she smiled from her lookout59, in the silence that was only the fact of hearing irrelevant60 sounds, as she caught the truth that you could easily accept people when you wanted them so to be delivered to you. When Aunt Maud wished them despatched, it was not to be done by deputy; it was clearly always a matter reserved for her own hand. But what made the girl wonder most was the implications of so much diplomacy in respect to her own value. What view might she take of her position in the light of this appearance that her companion feared so, as yet, to upset her? It was as if Densher were accepted partly under the dread61 that if he hadn't been she would act in resentment62. Hadn't her aunt considered the danger that she would in that case have broken off, have seceded63? The danger was exaggerated—she would have done nothing so gross; but that, it seemed, was the way Mrs. Lowder saw her and believed her to be reckoned with. What importance therefore did she really attach to her, what strange interest could she take on their keeping on terms? Her father and her sister had their answer to this—even without knowing how the question struck her; they saw the lady of Lancaster Gate as panting to make her fortune, and the explanation of that appetite was that, on the accident of a nearer view than she had before enjoyed, she had been charmed, been dazzled. They approved, they admired in her one of the belated fancies of rich, capricious, violent old women—the more marked, moreover, because the result of no plot; and they piled up the possible results for the person concerned. Kate knew what to think of her own power thus to carry by storm; she saw herself as handsome, no doubt, but as hard, and felt herself as clever but as cold; and as so much too imperfectly ambitious, furthermore, that it was a pity, for a quiet life, she couldn't settle to be either finely or stupidly indifferent. Her intelligence sometimes kept her still—too still—but her want of it was restless; so that she got the good, it seemed to her, of neither extreme. She saw herself at present, none the less, in a situation, and even her sad, disillusioned65 mother, dying, but with Aunt Maud interviewing the nurse on the stairs, had not failed to remind her that it was of the essence of situations to be, under Providence66, worked. The dear woman had died in the belief that she was actually working the one then produced.
Kate took one of her walks with Densher just after her visit to Mr. Croy; but most of it went, as usual, to their sitting in talk. They had, under the trees, by the lake, the air of old friends—phases of apparent earnestness, in particular, in which they might have been settling every question in their vast young world; and periods of silence, side by side, perhaps even more, when "a long engagement!" would have been the final reading of the signs on the part of a passer struck with them, as it was so easy to be. They would have presented themselves thus as very old friends rather than as young persons who had met for the first time but a year before and had spent most of the interval67 without contact. It was indeed for each, already, as if they were older friends; and though the succession of their meetings might, between them, have been straightened out, they only had a confused sense of a good many, very much alike, and a confused intention of a good many more, as little different as possible. The desire to keep them just as they were had perhaps to do with the fact that in spite of the presumed diagnosis68 of the stranger there had been for them as yet no formal, no final understanding. Densher had at the very first pressed the question, but that, it had been easy to reply, was too soon; so that a singular thing had afterwards happened. They had accepted their acquaintance as too short for an engagement, but they had treated it as long enough for almost anything else, and marriage was somehow before them like a temple without an avenue. They belonged to the temple and they met in the grounds; they were in the stage at which grounds in general offered much scattered69 refreshment70. But Kate had meanwhile had so few confidants that she wondered at the source of her father's suspicions. The diffusion71 of rumour22 was of course, in London, remarkable, and for Marian not less—as Aunt Maud touched neither directly—the mystery had worked. No doubt she had been seen. Of course she had been seen. She had taken no trouble not to be seen, and it was a thing, clearly, she was incapable72 of taking. But she had been seen how?—and what was there to see? She was in love—she knew that: but it was wholly her own business, and she had the sense of having conducted herself, of still so doing, with almost violent conformity73.
"I've an idea—in fact I feel sure—that Aunt Maud means to write to you; and I think you had better know it." So much as this she said to him as soon as they met, but immediately adding to it: "So as to make up your mind how to take her. I know pretty well what she'll say to you."
She thought a little. "I can't do that. I should spoil it. She'll do the best for her own idea."
"Her idea, you mean, that I'm a sort of a scoundrel; or, at the best, not good enough for you?"
They were side by side again in their penny chairs, and Kate had another pause. "Not good enough for her."
"Oh, I see. And that's necessary."
He put it as a truth rather more than as a question; but there had been plenty of truths between them that each had contradicted. Kate, however, let this one sufficiently pass, only saying the next moment: "She has behaved extraordinarily75."
"And so have we," Densher declared. "I think, you know, we've been awfully decent."
"For ourselves, for each other, for people in general, yes. But not for her. For her," said Kate, "we've been monstrous76. She has been giving us rope. So if she does send for you," the girl repeated, "you must know where you are."
"That I always know. It's where you are that concerns me."
"Well," said Kate after an instant, "her idea of that is what you'll have from her." He gave her a long look, and whatever else people who wouldn't let her alone might have wished, for her advancement77, his long looks were the thing in the world she could never have enough of. What she felt was that, whatever might happen, she must keep them, must make them most completely her possession; and it was already strange enough that she reasoned, or at all events began to act, as if she might work them in with other and alien things, privately78 cherish them, and yet, as regards the rigour of it, pay no price. She looked it well in the face, she took it intensely home, that they were lovers; she rejoiced to herself and, frankly79, to him, in their wearing of the name; but, distinguished80 creature that, in her way, she was, she took a view of this character that scarce squared with the conventional. The character itself she insisted on as their right, taking that so for granted that it didn't seem even bold; but Densher, though he agreed with her, found himself moved to wonder at her simplifications, her values. Life might prove difficult—was evidently going to; but meanwhile they had each other, and that was everything. This was her reasoning, but meanwhile, for him, each other was what they didn't have, and it was just the point. Repeatedly, however, it was a point that, in the face of strange and special things, he judged it rather awkwardly gross to urge. It was impossible to keep Mrs. Lowder out of their scheme. She stood there too close to it and too solidly; it had to open a gate, at a given point, do what they would to take her in. And she came in, always, while they sat together rather helplessly watching her, as in a coach-in-four; she drove round their prospect81 as the principal lady at the circus drives round the ring, and she stopped the coach in the middle to alight with majesty82. It was our young man's sense that she was magnificently vulgar, but yet, quite, that this wasn't all. It wasn't with her vulgarity that she felt his want of means, though that might have helped her richly to embroider83 it; nor was it with the same infirmity that she was strong, original, dangerous.
His want of means—of means sufficient for anyone but himself—was really the great ugliness, and was, moreover, at no time more ugly for him than when it rose there, as it did seem to rise, shameless, face to face with the elements in Kate's life colloquially84 and conveniently classed by both of them as funny. He sometimes indeed, for that matter, asked himself if these elements were as funny as the innermost fact, so often vivid to him, of his own consciousness—his private inability to believe he should ever be rich. His conviction on this head was in truth quite positive and a thing by itself; he failed, after analysis, to understand it, though he had naturally more lights on it than any one else. He knew how it subsisted85 in spite of an equal consciousness of his being neither mentally nor physically86 quite helpless, neither a dunce nor a cripple; he knew it to be absolute, though secret, and also, strange to say, about common undertakings87, not discouraging, not prohibitive. Only now was he having to think if it were prohibitive in respect to marriage; only now, for the first time, had he to weigh his case in scales. The scales, as he sat with Kate, often dangled88 in the line of his vision; he saw them, large and black, while he talked or listened, take, in the bright air, singular positions. Sometimes the right was down and sometimes the left; never a happy equipoise—one or the other always kicking the beam. Thus was kept before him the question of whether it were more ignoble89 to ask a woman to take her chance with you, or to accept it from one's conscience that her chance could be at the best but one of the degrees of privation; whether, too, otherwise, marrying for money mightn't after all be a smaller cause of shame than the mere dread of marrying without. Through these variations of mood and view, all the same, the mark on his forehead stood clear; he saw himself remain without whether he married or not. It was a line on which his fancy could be admirably active; the innumerable ways of making money were beautifully present to him; he could have handled them, for his newspaper, as easily as he handled everything. He was quite aware how he handled everything; it was another mark on his forehead; the pair of smudges from the thumb of fortune, the brand on the passive fleece, dated from the primal90 hour and kept each other company. He wrote, as for print, with deplorable ease; since there had been nothing to stop him even at the age of ten, so there was as little at twenty; it was part of his fate in the first place and part of the wretched public's in the second. The innumerable ways of making money were, no doubt, at all events, what his imagination often was busy with after he had tilted91 his chair and thrown back his head with his hands clasped behind it. What would most have prolonged that attitude, moreover, was the reflection that the ways were ways only for others. Within the minute, now—however this might be—he was aware of a nearer view than he had yet quite had of those circumstances on his companion's part that made least for simplicity92 of relation. He saw above all how she saw them herself, for she spoke93 of them at present with the last frankness, telling him of her visit to her father and giving him, in an account of her subsequent scene with her sister, an instance of how she was perpetually reduced to patching up, in one way or another, that unfortunate woman's hopes.
"The tune," she exclaimed, "to which we're a failure as a family!" With which he had it again all from her—and this time, as it seemed to him, more than all: the dishonour94 her father had brought them, his folly95 and cruelty and wickedness; the wounded state of her mother, abandoned, despoiled96 and helpless, yet, for the management of such a home as remained to them, dreadfully unreasonable97 too; the extinction98 of her two young brothers—one, at nineteen, the eldest99 of the house, by typhoid fever, contracted at a poisonous little place, as they had afterwards found out, that they had taken for a summer; the other, the flower of the flock, a middy on the Britannia, dreadfully drowned, and not even by an accident at sea, but by cramp100, unrescued, while bathing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river during a holiday visit to the home of a shipmate. Then Marian's unnatural101 marriage, in itself a kind of spiritless turning of the other cheek to fortune: her actual wretchedness and plaintiveness102, her greasy103 children, her impossible claims, her odious104 visitors—these things completed the proof of the heaviness, for them all, of the hand of fate. Kate confessedly described them with an excess of impatience; it was much of her charm for Densher that she gave in general that turn to her descriptions, partly as if to amuse him by free and humorous colour, partly—and that charm was the greatest—as if to work off, for her own relief, her constant perception of the incongruity105 of things. She had seen the general show too early and too sharply, and she was so intelligent that she knew it and allowed for that misfortune; therefore when, in talk with him, she was violent and almost unfeminine, it was almost as if they had settled, for intercourse, on the short cut of the fantastic and the happy language of exaggeration. It had come to be definite between them at a primary stage that, if they could have no other straight way, the realm of thought at least was open to them. They could think whatever they liked about whatever they would—or, in other words, they could say it. Saying it for each other, for each other alone, only of course added to the taste. The implication was thereby106 constant that what they said when not together had no taste for them at all, and nothing could have served more to launch them, at special hours, on their small floating island than such an assumption that they were only making believe everywhere else. Our young man, it must be added, was conscious enough that it was Kate who profited most by this particular play of the fact of intimacy107. It always seemed to him that she had more life than he to react from, and when she recounted the dark disasters of her house and glanced at the hard, odd offset108 of her present exaltation—since as exaltation it was apparently109 to be considered—he felt his own grey domestic annals to make little show. It was naturally, in all such reference, the question of her father's character that engaged him most, but her picture of her adventure in Chirk Street gave him a sense of how little as yet that character was clear to him. What was it, to speak plainly, that Mr. Croy had originally done?
"I don't know—and I don't want to. I only know that years and years ago—when I was about fifteen—something or other happened that made him impossible. I mean impossible for the world at large first, and then, little by little, for mother. We of course didn't know it at the time," Kate explained, "but we knew it later; and it was, oddly enough, my sister who first made out that he had done something. I can hear her now—the way, one cold, black Sunday morning when, on account of an extraordinary fog, we had not gone to church, she broke it to me by the school-room fire. I was reading a history-book by the lamp—when we didn't go to church we had to read history-books—and I suddenly heard her say, out of the fog, which was in the room, and apropos110 of nothing: 'Papa has done something wicked.' And the curious thing was that I believed it on the spot and have believed it ever since, though she could tell me nothing more—neither what was the wickedness, nor how she knew, nor what would happen to him, nor anything else about it. We had our sense, always, that all sorts of things had happened, were all the while happening, to him; so that when Marian only said she was sure, tremendously sure, that she had made it out for herself, but that that was enough, I took her word for it—it seemed somehow so natural. We were not, however, to ask mother—which made it more natural still, and I said never a word. But mother, strangely enough, spoke of it to me, in time, of her own accord very much later on. He hadn't been with us for ever so long, but we were used to that. She must have had some fear, some conviction that I had an idea, some idea of her own that it was the best thing to do. She came out as abruptly111 as Marian had done: 'If you hear anything against your father—anything I mean, except that he's odious and vile—remember it's perfectly64 false.' That was the way I knew—it was true, though I recall that I said to her then that I of course knew it wasn't. She might have told me it was true, and yet have trusted me to contradict fiercely enough any accusation112 of him that I should meet—to contradict it much more fiercely and effectively, I think, than she would have done herself. As it happens, however," the girl went on, "I've never had occasion, and I've been conscious of it with a sort of surprise. It has made the world, at times, seem more decent. No one has so much as breathed to me. That has been a part of the silence, the silence that surrounds him, the silence that, for the world, has washed him out. He doesn't exist for people. And yet I'm as sure as ever. In fact, though I know no more than I did then, I'm more sure. And that," she wound up, "is what I sit here and tell you about my own father. If you don't call it a proof of confidence I don't know what will satisfy you."
"It satisfies me beautifully," Densher declared, "but it doesn't, my dear child, very greatly enlighten me. You don't, you know, really tell me anything. It's so vague that what am I to think but that you may very well be mistaken? What has he done, if no one can name it?"
"He has done everything."
"Oh—everything! Everything's nothing."
"Well then," said Kate, "he has done some particular thing. It's known—only, thank God, not to us. But it has been the end of him. You could doubtless find out with a little trouble. You can ask about."
Densher for a moment said nothing; but the next moment he made it up. "I wouldn't find out for the world, and I'd rather lose my tongue than put a question."
"And yet it's a part of me," said Kate.
"A part of you?"
"My father's dishonour." Then she sounded for him, but more deeply than ever yet, her note of proud, still pessimism113. "How can such a thing as that not be the great thing in one's life?"
She had to take from him again, on this, one of his long looks, and she took it to its deepest, its headiest dregs. "I shall ask you, for the great thing in your life," he said, "to depend on me a little more." After which, just hesitating, "Doesn't he belong to some club?" he inquired.
She had a grave headshake. "He used to—to many."
"But he has dropped them?"
"They've dropped him. Of that I'm sure. It ought to do for you. I offered him," the girl immediately continued—"and it was for that I went to him—to come and be with him, make a home for him so far as is possible. But he won't hear of it."
Densher took this in with visible, but generous, wonder. "You offered him—'impossible' as you describe him to me—to live with him and share his disadvantages?" The young man saw for the moment but the high beauty of it. "You are gallant114!"
"Because it strikes you as being brave for him?" She wouldn't in the least have this. "It wasn't courage—it was the opposite. I did it to save myself—to escape."
He had his air, so constant at this stage, as of her giving him finer things than any one to think about. "Escape from what?"
"From everything."
"Do you by any chance mean from me?"
"No; I spoke to him of you, told him—or what amounted to it—that I would bring you, if he would allow it, with me."
"But he won't allow it," said Densher.
"Won't hear of it on any terms. He won't help me, won't save me, won't hold out a finger to me," Kate went on; "he simply wriggles115 away, in his inimitable manner, and throws me back."
But she spoke again as with the sole vision of the whole scene she had evoked117. "It's a pity, because you'd like him. He's wonderful—he's charming." Her companion gave one of the laughs that marked in him, again, his feeling in her tone, inveterately118, something that banished119 the talk of other women, so far as he knew other women, to the dull desert of the conventional, and she had already continued. "He would make himself delightful120 to you."
"Even while objecting to me?"
"Well, he likes to please," the girl explained—"personally. He would appreciate you and be clever with you. It's to me he objects—that is as to my liking121 you."
"Heaven be praised then," Densher exclaimed, "that you like me enough for the objection!"
But she met it after an instant with some inconsequence. "I don't. I offered to give you up, if necessary, to go to him. But it made no difference, and that's what I mean," she pursued, "by his declining me on any terms. The point is, you see, that I don't escape."
Densher wondered. "But if you didn't wish to escape me?"
"I wished to escape Aunt Maud. But he insists that it's through her and through her only that I may help him; just as Marian insists that it's through her, and through her only, that I can help her. That's what I mean," she again explained, "by their turning me back."
The young man thought. "Your sister turns you back too?"
"Oh, with a push!"
"But have you offered to live with your sister?"
"I would in a moment if she'd have me. That's all my virtue—a narrow little family feeling. I've a small stupid piety—I don't know what to call it." Kate bravely sustained it; she made it out. "Sometimes, alone, I've to smother122 my shrieks123 when I think of my poor mother. She went through things—they pulled her down; I know what they were now—I didn't then, for I was a pig; and my position, compared with hers, is an insolence124 of success. That's what Marian keeps before me; that's what papa himself, as I say, so inimitably does. My position's a value, a great value, for them both"—she followed and followed. Lucid125 and ironic126, she knew no merciful muddle127. "It's the value—the only one they have."
Everything between our young couple moved today, in spite of their pauses, their margin128, to a quicker measure—the quickness and anxiety playing lightning-like in the sultriness. Densher watched, decidedly, as he had never done before. "And the fact you speak of holds you!"
"Of course, it holds me. It's a perpetual sound in my ears. It makes me ask myself if I've any right to personal happiness, any right to anything but to be as rich and overflowing129, as smart and shining, as I can be made."
Densher had a pause. "Oh, you might, with good luck, have the personal happiness too."
Her immediate answer to this was a silence like his own; after which she gave him straight in the face, but quite simply and quietly: "Darling!"
It took him another moment; then he was also quiet and simple. "Will you settle it by our being married to-morrow—as we can, with perfect ease, civilly?"
"Let us wait to arrange it," Kate presently replied, "till after you've seen her."
"Do you call that adoring me?" Densher demanded.
They were talking, for the time, with the strangest mixture of deliberation and directness, and nothing could have been more in the tone of it than the way she at last said: "You're afraid of her yourself."
He gave a smile a trifle glassy. "For young persons of a great distinction and a very high spirit, we're a caution!"
"Yes," she took it straight up; "we're hideously130 intelligent. But there's fun in it too. We must get our fun where we can. I think," she added, and for that matter, not without courage, "our relation's beautiful. It's not a bit vulgar. I cling to some saving romance in things."
It made him break into a laugh which had more freedom than his smile. "How you must be afraid you'll chuck me!"
"No, no, that would be vulgar. But, of course, I do see my danger," she admitted, "of doing something base."
"Then what can be so base as sacrificing me?"
"I shan't sacrifice you; don't cry out till you're hurt. I shall sacrifice nobody and nothing, and that's just my situation, that I want and that I shall try for everything. That," she wound up, "is how I see myself, and how I see you quite as much, acting131 for them."
"For 'them'?" and the young man strongly, extravagantly132 marked his coldness. "Thank you!"
"Don't you care for them?"
"Why should I? What are they to me but a serious nuisance?"
As soon as he had permitted himself this qualification of the unfortunate persons she so perversely133 cherished, he repented134 of his roughness—and partly because he expected a flash from her. But it was one of her finest sides that she sometimes flashed with a mere mild glow. "I don't see why you don't make out a little more that if we avoid stupidity we may do all. We may keep her."
He stared. "Make her pension us?"
"Well, wait at least till we have seen."
He thought. "Seen what can be got out of her?"
Kate for a moment said nothing. "After all I never asked her; never, when our troubles were at the worst, appealed to her nor went near her. She fixed135 upon me herself, settled on me with her wonderful gilded136 claws."
"You speak," Densher observed, "as if she were a vulture."
"Call it an eagle—with a gilded beak137 as well, and with wings for great flights. If she's a thing of the air, in short—say at once a balloon—I never myself got into her car. I was her choice."
It had really, her sketch138 of the affair, a high colour and a great style; at all of which he gazed a minute as at a picture by a master. "What she must see in you!"
"Wonders!" And, speaking it loud, she stood straight up. "Everything. There it is."
Yes, there it was, and as she remained before him he continued to face it. "So that what you mean is that I'm to do my part in somehow squaring her?"
"See her, see her," Kate said with impatience.
"Ah, do what you like!" And she walked in her impatience away.
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1
deviated
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| v.偏离，越轨( deviate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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5
credulous
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| adj.轻信的，易信的 | |
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diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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10
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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12
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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13
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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14
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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15
publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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16
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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17
anomalous
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| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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18
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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20
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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21
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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22
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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23
precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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24
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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25
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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26
annex
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| vt.兼并，吞并；n.附属建筑物 | |
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27
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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28
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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29
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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30
convoked
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| v.召集，召开（会议）( convoke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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32
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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33
culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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35
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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36
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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37
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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38
coerced
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| v.迫使做( coerce的过去式和过去分词 )；强迫；（以武力、惩罚、威胁等手段）控制；支配 | |
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39
apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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40
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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41
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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42
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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43
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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44
restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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45
inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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46
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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47
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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48
baker
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| n.面包师 | |
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49
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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50
technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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51
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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52
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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53
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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54
honourably
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| adv.可尊敬地，光荣地，体面地 | |
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55
scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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56
reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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57
parlance
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| n.说法；语调 | |
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58
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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59
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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60
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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61
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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62
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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63
seceded
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| v.脱离，退出( secede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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65
disillusioned
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| a.不再抱幻想的，大失所望的，幻想破灭的 | |
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66
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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67
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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68
diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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69
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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70
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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71
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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72
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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73
conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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74
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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75
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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76
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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77
advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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78
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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79
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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80
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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81
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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82
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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83
embroider
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| v.刺绣于(布)上；给…添枝加叶，润饰 | |
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84
colloquially
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| adv.用白话，用通俗语 | |
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85
subsisted
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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87
undertakings
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| 企业( undertaking的名词复数 )； 保证； 殡仪业； 任务 | |
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88
dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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89
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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90
primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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91
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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92
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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93
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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94
dishonour
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| n./vt.拒付（支票、汇票、票据等）；vt.凌辱，使丢脸；n.不名誉，耻辱，不光彩 | |
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95
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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96
despoiled
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| v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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97
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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98
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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99
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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100
cramp
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| n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚 | |
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101
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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102
plaintiveness
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103
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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104
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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105
incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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107
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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108
offset
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| n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿 | |
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109
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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112
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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113
pessimism
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| n.悲观者，悲观主义者，厌世者 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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115
wriggles
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| n.蠕动，扭动( wriggle的名词复数 )v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的第三人称单数 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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116
concurred
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| 同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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117
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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118
inveterately
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| adv.根深蒂固地，积习地 | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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122
smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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123
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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124
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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126
ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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127
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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128
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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129
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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130
hideously
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| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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131
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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perversely
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| adv. 倔强地 | |
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134
repented
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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beak
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| n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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139
grovel
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| vi.卑躬屈膝，奴颜婢膝 | |
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