Chapter: I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked
by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into
account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily
denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed
them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said
nothing, to study Mrs. Grose's odd face. I did this to such purpose that
I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence that,
however, I would engage to break down on the first private opportunity.
This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes with her in the
housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked
bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her sitting
in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her
best: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining
room, a large clean image of the "put away"--of drawers closed and
locked and rest without a remedy.

"Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them--so long as
they were there--of course I promised. But what had happened to you?"

"I only went with you for the walk," I said. "I had then to come back to
meet a friend."

She showed her surprise. "A friend--YOU?"

"Oh, yes, I have a couple!" I laughed. "But did the children give you a
reason?"

"For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it
better. Do you like it better?"

My face had made her rueful. "No, I like it worse!" But after an instant
I added: "Did they say why I should like it better?"

"No; Master Miles only said, 'We must do nothing but what she likes!'"

"I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?"

"Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, 'Oh, of course, of course!'--and I
said the same."

I thought a moment. "You were too sweet, too--I can hear you all. But
nonetheless, between Miles and me, it's now all out."

"All out?" My companion stared. "But what, miss?"

"Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind. I came home, my
dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel."

I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well
in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as
she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her
comparatively firm. "A talk! Do you mean she spoke?"

"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom."

"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, and the candor
of her stupefaction.

"That she suffers the torments--!"

It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture,
gape. "Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?"

"Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them-" I faltered
myself with the horror of it.

But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. "To share them--?"

"She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have
fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to
show I was. "As I've told you, however, it doesn't matter."

"Because you've made up your mind? But to what?"

"To everything."

"And what do you call 'everything'?"

"Why, sending for their uncle."

"Oh, miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. "ah, but I will, I WILL! I
see it's the only way. What's 'out,' as I told you, with Miles is that
if he thinks I'm afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that--he
shall see he's mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me
on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if I'm to be
reproached with having done nothing again about more school--"

"Yes, miss--" my companion pressed me.

"Well, there's that awful reason."

There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she
was excusable for being vague. "But--a--which?"

"Why, the letter from his old place."

"You'll show it to the master?"

"I ought to have done so on the instant."

"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision.

"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't undertake
to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled--"

"For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared.

"For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and beautiful and
perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured?
He's exquisite--so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole
thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left here
such people--!"

"He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." She had
turned quite pale.

"Well, you shan't suffer," I answered.

"The children shan't!" she emphatically returned.

I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell
him?"

"You needn't tell him anything. _I_'ll tell him."

I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write--?" Remembering she couldn't,
I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?"

"I tell the bailiff. HE writes."

"And should you like him to write our story?"

My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and
it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were
again in her eyes. "Ah, miss, YOU write!"

"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated.



I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had
changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room,
with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank
sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of
the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage
and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my endless obsession,
I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at
rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected.
His voice tinkled out. "I say, you there--come in." It was a gaiety in
the gloom!

I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very
much at his ease. "Well, what are YOU up to?" he asked with a grace of
sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been
present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was "out."

I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?"

"Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? You're
like a troop of cavalry!" he beautifully laughed.

"Then you weren't asleep?"

"Not much! I lie awake and think."

I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held
out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed.
"What is it," I asked, "that you think of?"

"What in the world, my dear, but YOU?"

"Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on that! I had
so far rather you slept."

"Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours."

I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. "Of what queer business,
Miles?"

"Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!"

I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper
there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow.
"What do you mean by all the rest?"

"Oh, you know, you know!"

I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and
our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting
his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at
that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. "Certainly you shall go
back to school," I said, "if it be that that troubles you. But not to
the old place--we must find another, a better. How could I know it did
trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it
at all?" His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made
him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children's
hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I
possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who
might have helped to cure him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might
help! "Do you know you've never said a word to me about your school--I
mean the old one; never mentioned it in any way?"

He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly
gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. "Haven't I?" It wasn't
for ME to help him--it was for the thing I had met!

Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from
him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known;
so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his
little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part
of innocence and consistency. "No, never--from the hour you came back.
You've never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades,
nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never,
little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling of anything that
MAY have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I'm in the
dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the
first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to anything in your
previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept the present." It was
extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or
whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I dared but half
to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble,
appear as accessible as an older person--imposed him almost as an
intellectual equal. "I thought you wanted to go on as you are."

It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate,
like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. "I
don't--I don't. I want to get away."

"You're tired of Bly?"

"Oh, no, I like Bly."

"Well, then--?"

"Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!"

I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge.
"You want to go to your uncle?"

Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the
pillow. "Ah, you can't get off with that!"

I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color.
"My dear, I don't want to get off!"

"You can't, even if you do. You can't, you can't!"--he lay beautifully
staring. "My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle
things."

"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may be sure it will be to
take you quite away."

"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm working for?
You'll have to tell him--about the way you've let it all drop: you'll
have to tell him a tremendous lot!"

The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the
instant, to meet him rather more. "And how much will YOU, Miles, have to
tell him? There are things he'll ask you!"

He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?"

"The things you've never told me. To make up his mind what to do with
you. He can't send you back--"

"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new field."

He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable
gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the
poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance
at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more
dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear
that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the
tenderness of my pity I embraced him. "Dear little Miles, dear little
Miles--!"

My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with
indulgent good humor. "Well, old lady?"

"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?"

He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his
hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. "I've told you--I
told you this morning."

Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?"

He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him;
then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied.

There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me
release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows
I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn
my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him.
"I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said.

"Well, then, finish it!"

I waited a minute. "What happened before?"

He gazed up at me again. "Before what?"

"Before you came back. And before you went away."

For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. "What
happened?"

It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that
I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting
consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize
once more the chance of possessing him. "Dear little Miles, dear little
Miles, if you KNEW how I want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing
but that, and I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong--I'd
rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"--oh, I brought it
out now even if I SHOULD go too far--"I just want you to help me to save
you!" But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. The
answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an
extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the
room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The
boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of
sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him,
a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and
was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared
about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window
tight. "Why, the candle's out!" I then cried.

"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles.

 When the others return from church, they make no mention of the governess' absence. At teatime, the governess questions Mrs. Grose and discovers it was little Miles' idea that nothing be said. The governess tells how she returned to meet "a friend" and to talk with her. She informs Mrs. Grose that Miss Jessel "suffers the torments . . . of the lost. Of the damned." The governess claims that her predecessor confessed this and also stated that she wants little Flora to share the torments with her. After this discovery, the governess decides that she must write to the uncle and insist he come down and assume responsibility for the entire predicament. In addition, she now concludes that little Miles must have been expelled from his school for wickedness. That night, the governess begins the letter to her employer. Leaving her room for a moment, she walks to little Miles' door. Even though it is late in the night, he calls for her to come in. She discovers that he is lying awake worrying about "this queer business" of theirs. The governess thinks he means the business about the ghosts, but little Miles quickly adds that he means this business about how he is being brought up. He emphasizes again his desire to return to a normal school, and the governess tells him that she has already written his uncle. She then implores him to let her help him. In answer to her plea, there comes a big gush of wind through the window. Little Miles shrieks and when the governess recovers her composure, she notices that the candle is out. Little Miles confesses that he blew it out.

